Meal Planning and Cooking: Healthy Cooking Gifts

A top of the line kitchen scale, like this one from Nutri-Weigh, calculates the calories, protein grams, carbohydrate and total sugar grams, and the amount of fat, fiber, sodium, and cholesterol. It also calculates your net carbohydrates and displays the glycemic index value of your foods. A must-have for someone who needs to monitor calories, macronutrients, and portion sizes closely.

Steaming vegetables is better than boiling because vegetables cooked this way retain more of their healthy nutrients. You can steam your vegetables with a basket steamer, but it's much more convenient to use a stand-alone steamer. Choose this easy-to-clean rice cooker and vegetable steamer by Sanyo. And after your rice or vegetables are cooked, you can use the steamer to keep them warm.

A good set of knives makes food preparation much easier. What new cook wouldn't love this set of Wusthof knives and block? This beginner's set includes:

• 3 1/2" Wusthof Paring Knife
• 8" Wusthof Bread Knife
• 6" Wusthof Cook's Knife
• 9" Wusthof Sharpening Steel
• Wusthof Kitchen Shears
• Wusthof 9 Slot Block

Every cook needs at least one cutting board and two is better so you don't have to keep washing them while you're in the middle of your food preparation. Bamboo is an excellent choice because it's more durable than a typical maple cutting board. It's also resistant to bacterial growth.

Use a food sealer to prepare your foods for storage. This Food Saver by Tilia is also handy for sealing extra meals so you can keep them in the freezer until you're ready to heat them up for a future dinner. The Tilia Food Saver is very versatile - it will seal moist foods as well as dry foods and you can even seal delicate fruits and berries.

This programmable thermometer by Acu-Rite makes it so easy to measure the internal temperatures of the meats and casseroles you cook. The meat thermometer has an alarm that goes off automatically when your food reaches the preset temperature.

Using old worn-out pots and pans makes cooking and cleaning more work (and they look ugly too). This beautiful stainless steel set from Calphalon is the perfect replacement - in fact they're almost too pretty to keep in your cabinets.

A mandolin vegetable slicer is an excellent kitchen tool for slicing vegetables. The Bron mandolin has blads that allow the cook to slice, julienne, crinkle-cut or waffle-cut vegetables at different thicknesses.

Here's a great gift for a tea-lover. Herbal, black and green teas (including regular or decaffeinated green tea) may have many healthful properties and this stylish teapot is perfect for preparing your tea. Available in different sizes.

Food processors serve so many purposes in healthful cooking. This first-class food processor by Cuisinart has plenty of power, plus it features a large bowl and easy to clean dishwasher-safe parts.