A regional cookbook – Find a local bookstore that sells regional cookbooks. You should be able to find cookbooks that focus on the seasonal foods of your region written by those who live and cook in the region.

Check in Tryon at the Bookshelf and Village Books, or in Saluda at the Salamander.

A regional vegetable gardening book – Generic gardening books are helpful, but if you want to know when the earliest date you can plant your spring garden is, a regional book is more helpful.   Try the Gardener’s Cottage in Saluda or Vine’s N Stuff in Tryon.

Seeds – Buy an arm load of organic and heirloom seeds to fill up a stocking. Try the Farm Store at the Mill Spring Ag Center where they carry Sow True Seeds based in Asheville: organic, heirloom and open-pollinated.

Honey – Give a jar of local honey and honey-based health and body products, also at the Farm Store.

Wine – Put a pretty bow on a bottle of wine from a local winery. You don’t necessarily have to run to the winery to buy it if you don’t have the time. Many wine stores have a regional section.  Check in with Janet at Carolina Foothills Chamber of Commerce for chamber members who sell local wines.

Slow Food membership – Purchase a membership to Slow Food USA in the gift recipients name if he or she doesn’t already have one.  Go to slowfoodusa.org.

Coffee – Give someone a bag of fair trade coffee, a small bag of organic sugar, and a fun mug purchased from a local potter.  Meanwhile Local Foods Market and E.S.P. Pottery in Saluda.

Reusable produce bags – Chances are the slow foodie in your life already has reusable grocery bags, but what about reusable. Nothing says reusable plastic grocery bags like “Love My Planet” at the Farm Store in Mill Spring.

Trendy style bags are woven from plastic bags and are a stylish accessory to the environmentally-conscious.

Kitchen counter compost bucket – If your slow foodie always has a bowl of kitchen scraps on the counter top, help keep them in style with a bucket that hides the potato peels in winter and keeps the fruit flies away from the melon rinds in summer.  DIY with supplies from Tryon Mountain Hardware in Lynn

CSA membership – If you’ve got the money to spend, this would make any slow food advocate happy.

A membership to a Community Supported Agriculture program will give that special someone on your gift list weeks and months of farm fresh gifts.

For a four-week or nine-week local organic CSA gift certificate good January through March of 2014, contact info@mannacabanna.com in Saluda.