Groceries and other essentials are on holiday gift lists this year
With unemployment still high and the economy sluggish, more consumers are wrapping baskets of kitchen staples, boxes of meat and grocery store gift cards to help loved ones stock dwindling pantries.
Last Christmas, Karen Hoxmeier bought her brother a cashmere scarf and several pricey gadgets for his digital camera.
This year, she bought the out-of-work Hollywood cameraman something more essential: groceries.
With the nation's unemployment rate still high and the economy sluggish, a growing number of people are giving food this holiday season. But it's not fruitcake, eggnog or Christmas cookies. Instead, the quiet voice of frugality is prompting consumers to wrap up baskets of kitchen staples, boxes of meat and grocery store gift cards to help loved ones stock dwindling pantries.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hoxmeier got the idea after sneaking a peek inside her younger brother Bill's kitchen cabinets. She found them pretty bare, she said, "even for a guy."
For months, her 35-year-old sibling had cut back to make ends meet. His cable TV? Cancelled. The phone? Long gone. Shopping trips for vegetarian specialties at his favorite market, Trader Joe's? Completely out.
So Hoxmeier headed to the eclectic grocery chain this month to purchase a gift card. "He's getting thin," said Hoxmeier, 37, a mother of three who lives in Murrieta. "He can use food."
--------------------------
For Polly Blitzer, giving groceries was a way to care for an aging loved one. Beatrice Gage, her childhood nanny and a woman Blitzer considers a second mother, lives on a fixed income in rural Louisiana. A recent dentures bill cost Gage $600, eating up half her monthly income.
During a visit in May, Blitzer found limp vegetables in the woman's refrigerator.
"She told me there were still good parts," said Blitzer, 35, editor in chief of Beauty Blitz Media in New York. Blitzer immediately called a market in Louisiana to arrange for $250 worth of grocery credit for the elderly woman. Blitzer contacted the store again this month to add more money to Gage's account.
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-food-gift-20101223,0,6677581.story