I don’t wear an apron that often in the kitchen, and neither does my daughter, but that doesn’t mean she couldn’t benefit from an extra layer of mess protection. So as she starts cooking more, I am wondering what type of cooking apparel I should get for her. There are literally hundreds of types of aprons on the market to choose from. Just do a google image search for ‘kids aprons’ and browse the many options.

Using a regular apron has its advantages. A kid won’t grow out of it as quickly, and it can double up as an art smock for other messy activities. With that said, a lot of kids love to dress up, and the little chef in the family may just want to look like an actual chef. It all depends upon your kid.

I am personally not a big fan of the cutesy patterned apron and hat sets. I’m sure kids would love them, but I like it when companies make real cooking gear for kids – just smaller. After searching the web, here were a few of the chef uniforms for kids that I liked the best.

Chef Works has a range of realistic chef clothes. They have coats, checkered pants, and plain white aprons. All three products will cost about $60, so this option is a bit more expensive.

Similar in cost and style to Chef Works, The Chef’s Emporium has professional looking chef uniforms in small sizes. You can buy an apron, pair of checkered pants, and chef’s coat for about $55.

One of the best deals on complete kids uniforms, however, comes from KNG out of San Francisco. Pants, coat, apron and hat will cost about $31. The sizes start at 6-8 years though, so if you need smaller items you will have to look elsewhere. The Chef’s Emporium starts sizes at 3-5 years.

Chefskin also has very reasonably priced aprons, hats, and coats in a range of colors. Their products also seem to get good marks on Amazon.

The outfit shown above is another option from The Apron Place. The coat is a bit steep in price though and sells for roughly $39. The hat will run you about $12.

For hats, I thought Growing Cooks had a nice selection with reasonable prices. Each cloth hat will cost about $9, and they even have paper collapsable hats for kids that sell for under $2.

If you are having a kids cooking party, Designer Online has a set of six colored aprons and hats that are disposable. The whole set will cost about $27, but please note that the company is out of Australia.

And lastly, I know that I said I wasn’t into cutesy chef clothes, but the Key2Life store at Etsy has some neat patterned aprons and hats for the little ones. I especially like the pink and white polka dot set that I linked to. The little chef model is quite adorable too.

And if you want your baby to look cute/ridiculous, Best in Babies has an infant chefs outfit for $28. It’s cute but a little freaky too.

Most of these sellers also offer embroidery for an added cost if you want to personalize your kid’s cooking outfit. Also, before investing in a more expensive coat, be aware that the size ranges are usually in two-year increments, and some of the coats come with rolled cuffs already. There might be a lot of cloth to roll up if the coat runs large. In other words, you won’t always have a perfectly fit coat like the girl pictured above.

I was struck by how the book, The Geometry of Pasta, by Jacob Kenedy reminded me of the kids’ books that feature black on white images. Young children are often mesmerized by contrasting black and white images, and there are several titles for sale on Amazon. I recently purchased Look, Look! for my new baby on the way, and I might try this pasta book out too. Granted, the subtleties of pasta shapes might not be as captivating to a young child as black-and-white flowers, fish, cats and cars, but it is worth a try.

With that said, The Geometry of Pasta cookbook would be a great addition to any cookbook collection. It has an elegant look with great graphic design. Also, the book jacket opens up into a nice poster of various pasta shapes that can be used as a pasta learning tool for the kids. You can see an image of the poster here.

If you are interested, you can check out The Geometry of Pasta website to get a better idea of what’s in the book. They have different pages with pasta shapes, recipes from the book, and the video below. The video is rather interesting, and I love the stark shapes and minimalist instruction — though it does go rather quickly at times.

The creative design of the book was done by co-author Caz Hildebrand of Here Design, and the technical drawings were done by Lisa Vandy, who is the Creative Partner at Now Ware. Lisa Vandy has designed similarly styled products for the Hairy Bikers to include this neat tea towel. There is also apparently a similar tea towel for the Geometry of Pasta that is soon to be sold. I really like the idea of these black-and-white tea towels, but I must say that I prefer the Hairy Biker one. It has more recognizable kitchen objects on it.

Of course, I can’t find the towel available in the US, but maybe I will look into having it shipped from the UK. The book can be purchased from Amazon for $16.50.

Food & Wine had an article in the December issue about how to gift wine for a dinner party, and I thought some of the tips were pretty useful. I know a lot of people fret over bringing wine especially if they know that a person is a wine snob or just has a more developed palette. I’d probably put myself in the wine snob category, so maybe subconsciously this post is just to help people bring me better wine. Who knows.

So here are some of the tips and strategies on how to make a host happy with your wine gift.

• Champagne or decent quality sparkling wine is always a good choice. It is a celebratory wine and the host can re-gift it if they don’t drink sparkling.

• Wines that go well with a lot of foods and appeal to broader personal tastes are good choices. The usual suspect here is pinot noir. I also try to stay away from tart wines such as sauvignon blanc and really meaty fruit bombs such as zinfandel and amarone — unless I know that the host loves these types of wine.

• For really special or expensive bottles, call ahead and ask what food the host is preparing. You can say that you will bring the perfect bottle and they will usually appreciate the help. This strategy will also ensure that your bottle will be opened. Nothing is worse than bringing a really nice wine and no one tries it.

• Bring the wine as it should be served. This means chill your wine if you are bringing a white. If you don’t, you are just asking for the host not to open your bottle.

• Try bringing a magnum. Though I know where the Food & Wine author is coming from on this one, for most people bringing a large two-bottle sized wine seems a bit odd as most people don’t buy them. But with that said, a magnum of good wine will definitely be appreciated and will simply have to be opened. If you go this route, just make sure it is good and not that bulk wine in big bottles from the bottom shelf.

If you are looking for a gift bag to bring the wine bottle in, Hero Bags has a nice option (see above). They have a one-bottle bag for $12.95 and a two-bottle tote for $14.95.

Another tip if you are hosting a party is to write guests’ names directly onto their wine glasses with a Sharpie to identify whose glass it is. The ink won’t smudge, but it will still come off with warm soap and water. If you worry that it won’t come off your nice glasses, then test try it first.

In the December issue of Food & Wine, the Zip & Dry Apron by Just Perfect, Inc. was featured in the ‘Staff Favorites’ gift section.

I think this is a great idea. Not only does it offer the convenience of always having a towel around while cooking, the zip-off feature also makes cleaning easier. You can just throw the portion of the apron that tends to get the dirtiest into the wash after a particularly messy cooking session. I also like it in that it helps segregate towels. It is always good to keep hand-drying towels and dish-drying towels separate to prevent accidental food contamination. With this apron, that job is just a little bit easier.

The one thing I wish they would offer though is an additional towel portion with each apron, or at least the option of buying additional zip-off towels. Maybe in the future this will be possible, but for now it isn’t an option. Regardless, the apron is still a great idea for the home cook.

You can purchase it for $25 from the Just Perfect shop, and if you order two or more items, the shipping is free.