Are You Deft?

Can you whip up an omelet at a moment’s notice? Would you like people to know it? These gold charms shaped like a miniature omelet pan and spatula make the bold claim.

Gold omelet pan ($90) and spatula ($52) charms from Freehand, Los Angeles.

Serious Casserole

Chantal cookware is serious stuff: It’s heavy and conducts heat beautifully, and it has a nonporous enamel cooking surface. This basic 4 1/4-quart oval casserole would get anybody whipping up roast chicken and pot roast in fine style. It comes in chili red, cobalt blue, forest green or white.

Chantal oval casserole $89.99, at most Williams-Sonoma and Crate and Barrel stores; Jordano’s in Santa Barbara. For retailers, call (800) 365-4354.

A Bricka Tea

If you’ve seen any of the recent movies set in Tibet, you know about the tea drinking that goes on there. This is the tea--Chinese congou tea, pressed into traditional hard, patterned bricks (they once served as money in Central Asia). It looks cool, and you can actually brew it. Just scrape off 1 teaspoon per cup.

Brick tea, $19.95 at Sur La Table, Pasadena.

Hey, Spuds, Let’s Party

The ultimate in potato luxury is this heavy copper potato steamer for French-style pommes vapeur. It holds two pounds of potatoes, and condensation is scrupulously funneled away from the potatoes, preventing mushiness.

Copper potato steamer, $199.95 at Sur La Table, Pasadena.

Brooklyn at Your Door

Junior’s Restaurant is a Brooklyn mecca for deli food--and for its 3-pound cheesecakes, which it ships all over the country. In addition to the traditional plain and pretty traditional pumpkin, chocolate swirl and black forest flavors, it offers novelties such as apple crumb, cherry crumb, chocolate malted, brownie marble swirl and this raspberry swirl.

Junior’s cheesecakes, $24.95 plus shipping and handling from (800) 9JUNIOR.

Not Your Everyday Crystal

Make the dining table a work of art with Champagne flutes and wine glasses designed by Venice artist Patricia Heller. Or go a step further and have Heller create designs on glass to match your china or table linens.

Wine glass, $36; Champagne flute, $28; both at Windows, Pasadena.

It’s the Top

A great way to top off a half-full bottle of wine or to give a bit of elegance to a cruet of olive oil headed to the dining table is a silver-plated stopper. We’re starting to see more of these in wine and cookware stores, but we especially like the design from London’s Bouchon Ltd. Our favorite: the bulbous “Michelin” top.

$42 at Newman Harris Artwares on Melrose Avenue in West Hollywood, Parchment at the Plaza in Westlake Village and Pierre Lafond in Montecito. For orders of 20 or more, contact Track 2 Studio at (310) 652-4321.

Time to Eat

With bacon for hands and fried eggs at the 6 and 10 o’clock positions, Berkeley ceramist Polly Frizzell keeps the kitchen sunny-side-up 24 hours a day. Some of her art is timeless: She also makes non-clock bowls, plates and platters, including one with toast and coffee icons. Guess she’s a morning person.

Clock, $135, and bowl, $96, at Craft and Folk Art Museum, Los Angeles.

Have a Colander, It’s Small

It would be hard to stuff a whole stocking with these cute little cooking utensil ornaments, but they might fill in the odd corner.

Pots and pans ornaments, $2.99 each from Bristol Kitchens, South Pasadena.

Hot Pots

Something about tea cries out to be made in whimsical pots. There are pots that look like an egg frying in a pan, a TV set with Lucy emerging from it or a Noah’s ark, pots decorated with tea pot designs, pots that look like a ball of yarn with a knitting needle for a spout--even one with a handle four times its own height.

Tea pots $25 to $198, at Craft and Folk Art Museum Gift Shop, Los Angeles.