I am not a great shopping enthusiast! Except around the winter holidays, I hate the parking problems, I don’t enjoy browsing aisle after aisle looking for something that would be honestly appreciated by Grandma or Uncle Arthur. I certainly do not like waiting on line with frustrated people waiting for the lone employee to handle yet another exchange. During the holidays, I enjoy meandering through stores simply people watching, without being burdened with packages. The experience for whatever reason gets me into a holiday mood, but I do my actual shopping and buying almost entirely on the web. That’s a practice I developed in the very early years of the Web.

Online shopping didn’t save my life all by itself. Just because I started using the Web before any of my friends, I still had to make the decisions. And then, around five years ago, or so, I discovered food.

That wasn’t very honestly phrased, because I discovered food when I was still an infant. But I didn’t discover food as a gift idea until recently. You see, at that time I received a gift basket full of hardly edible sausages, processed cheese spreads (mostly chemicals I think) and crackers that were about as crunchy as a rock. However, the poor quality of what passed as food in that gift turned out to be my inspiration. “What,” I thought, “If I had received genuinely good food?” How different that would have been, and how much I would have enjoyed it.

Since then, I have been busy conducting research (that’s just my word for “sampling”). I have found online vendors who offer genuine quality for about the same price that you can get that synthetic stuff at the mall. (You know the one I mean, but I’m not about to open myself to a libel or slander charge by naming the brand.) Just like the mall kiosks, the online shops handle all the shipping, gift cards, everything. I know that my gifts will be exceptionally pleasant surprises for all of my gift recipients.

These Internet shops offer everything from gourmet fruit baskets to lobster dinners (well, they won’t be alive when they are actually eaten), from wine gift baskets to cookie bouquets. The array of gift foods is really quite amazing.

I do keep gift foods around the house, beautifully or cleverly arranged, for my guests who come to my house or for those whom I visit in person during those gift giving times. The Internet provides assistance to me even in these cases, because it is packed full of great ideas for arranging and wrapping gift food.

If you happen to see me strolling a store aisle with a smile on my face when everybody else seems frantic, you will now know my secret. But don’t tell my Uncle Arthur.