Somebody, somewhere will get a sports car for Christmas and somebody else will get a church calendar. Let’s just hope everybody gets what they want.

What to get the culinary-obsessed? Consider these far out and fabulous ideas in every price range.

A cooking school like no other

In Puglia with Silvestro Silvestori

What better way to understand the heart and soul of a region than through its food culture, during a week spent way down the heel of the Italian boot, at the Awaiting Table Cookery School?

The promise: You will get your hands dirty. You will meet the locals. You will make friends. You will eat and drink and laugh, but you won’t ever see Italy or Italian food and wine exactly the same way again.

Silvestro Silvestori’s cooking and wine school in Lecce is the stuff of dreams — where do we sign up? At awaitingtable.com.

In the Perigord with Marnie Fudge and Thierry Meret

Chefs and culinary instructors Marnie Fudge and Thierry Meret of Calgary’s Cuisine et Chateau cooking school offer gastronomic adventures in the Perigord region of France.

What happens during their cooking weeks?

“We stay at a private estate, not a hotel, nobody else is there but us,” says Marnie.

“The food culture permeates everything here. The grocery store has a Costco-sized aisle filled with duck confit. This is the land of walnuts, truffles and duck, after all. The strawberry lady at the market has eight types of strawberry, just picked. She’ll say ‘these five you need to eat within six hours, this one is for jam, this one is best macerated with some eau de vie.

“Every day there is a hands-on cooking experience and an agricultural experience; a farm or market visit, or we go to a vineyard and picnic in the vines. We are in Bergerac and close to the historic Chateau Monbazillac. But nothing is forced. If you want to sit by the pool or go for a bike ride, that’s OK too.

“It’s a personal experience, for people looking for something truly authentic, not overly packaged and definitely luxurious,” says Marnie.

Perigord Culinary Tour, June 1-June 7, cuisineandchateau.com.

Go play with your food

The MOLECULE-R Cuisine R-evolution and Cocktail R-evolution kits are culinary chemistry sets that give you the tools to make your own pop rocks, or caviar from spinach, or turn bacon into powder for your Bloody Mary bites. The kits contain all the texturing agents, emulsifiers and stabilizers you need to gel, spherify and deconstruct in your kitchen.

You haven’t had this much fun since your first Easy Bake oven, $65, at Call the Kettle Black.

Cheese knife set with bamboo gift box

Not so far out, but certainly fabulous and eminently useful. Who isn’t in need of a good cheese knife?

This set has three — made of fully-forged Japanese stainless steel — one knife is suitable for soft and creamy cheeses, one for semi-soft and one for hard cheeses.

Three-piece set in an ecologically-friendly moso bamboo box, $55, at Paddy’s Cheese.

Gaga over Aga

Nigella Lawson has an Aga. So does Gerard Depardieu, and Jamie Oliver supposedly has three. My neighbour has one, a stunning fire engine red four-door model, named Phillipa.

What’s the deal with the always-on-heavy-duty stove called an Aga cooker, that we think of as quintessentially British?

It’s actually Swedish, or at least was invented in Sweden, by the Nobel Prize-winning Swedish physicist Gustaf Dalén, who wanted his wife and maid to have it a bit easier in the kitchen.

“She’s the living heart of our house, where everybody congregates,” says my nieghbour, Nicole Hiebert. “It took about a week to figure out what cooked where; Agas are kind of quirky. She’s also great for drying laundry and warming doggie blankets.”

Made in Britain since the 1930s, Aga cookers work on the principle that cast iron absorbs heat, and the accumulated heat is used on demand for cooking. No knobs, no dials, the surface and the compartments, which give the Aga its distinctive, reassuringly sturdy look, are each meant for a specific task.

Once you turn it on, you never have to turn it off. But let’s not think there has been no technological march forward; the new models called iTotal Control not only can be turned on and off, they can be programmed by text message.

Agas are not exactly an appliance you can heave into the trunk of your car. Each weighs over half a ton, and are built on site.

Expect to spend about $30,000. (You can spend less. The Professional series starts at about $13,000.)

Or you could spend more and invest in their blingier, fully-custom French cousin, La Cornue which range from $60,000 – $100,000.

Avenue Appliances is the best place to investigate the Aga phenomena. They have several Agas, “live” says owner Faith Geisbrecht.

You will never ever worry again as to whether or not you turned off the stove.

Pots and pans for your induction cook top

Induction cook tops require specific types of cookware. Consider Zwilling Sensation for its high performance features: the proprietary SIGMA Clad five-ply stainless and copper layers create even distribution right to the edge of the pans — no hot spots. Stainless steel darkens over time. Not these, as the interiors are coated with Silvinox, an electrochemical treatment that creates a silvery glossy finish which resists oxidation. The ergnomic, stay-cool handles have interior welds, making them easy to clean and they have a shot-blasted finish, impervious to scratches and fingerprints. Sensation is ideal for every cooktop, not just induction.

Well-priced, well-made. The ten-piece set on offer at an introductory price is made in Belgium, $1,000.