Every year I pursue the search for a superior smoked salmon, to serve with blini or buttered toast. I usually look for something strong and gamy, prepared with wild Atlantic salmon, whose flesh stays lean and firm as they swim freely in the icy sea. The problem is that wild salmon become increasingly rare with every passing year. In England I recently sampled a particularly fine example of nearly wild Icelandic salmon cured as gravlax. The fish had been cultivated in an ingenious way: raised in farming pens for just one year and then set free into pristine Arctic waters; exactly one year later--and sometimes two--the salmon return to their birthplace, whereupon they can be caught.

But I could find no source of cured and smoked, nearly-wild Icelandic salmon in the United States; New York City supermarkets seem swamped these days by a particularly mediocre brand of farmed Icelandic smoked salmon, full of sinews and unpleasant to eat. Energetically snooping around, I discovered that Icelanders living here order their favorite holiday foods directly from Reykjavik. Many simply telephone or send a fax to Petur Petursson at his shop, Kjotbur Peturs (which means something like "Peter's Cold-Cellar"), which has an efficient and economical arrangement with DHL courier service. In his exemplary English, Petursson explained that he had something even better than what he calls 97 percent wild Icelandic salmon. His fish are completely wild, come in a wide range of sizes (unlike farmed salmon), are cured overnight in dry salt (not brined and bloated), and then cold-smoked over oak--or, for an authentic Icelandic treat, over dried sheep dung. I chose the oak, as most foreigners do. Two days later, the man from DHL rang my bell with 4 pounds of extremely delicious fish in his truck--firm and dense, without sinews or bones, assertively (but not overwhelmingly) cured and smoked. When this holiday madness is over, I will try the sheep-dung version.

Cost: $16 a pound for the salmon itself, a gigantic bargain (this assumes 67 Icelandic crowns to the dollar, but the crown is quite stable). Three-day delivery by DHL, six days via Icelandic parcel post (if you buy 4 pounds of salmon or more, DHL is actually less expensive--it charges $36 postage for 4 pounds--bringing the smoked salmon to $25 a pound). Add a container of traditional Icelandic mustard sauce for $1.20. MC, V.

Address: Kjotbúr Péturs, Austurstraeti 17, Reykjavik, Iceland. Telephone: (011) 354-551-2112. Fax: (011)-354-551-4376.

Every year that I aggressively seek out--and dutifully taste--every new jam, jelly, preserve, and conserve on the market, I see no reason to alter my conclusions about the Theory and Practice of Jams: The best are mostly fruit, gently sweetened with the clear flavor of cane sugar (not concentrated grape and apple juice, which makes everything it touches taste like overcooked fruit cocktail, but allows the producer to claim "no sugar added"); and they contain no pectin thickener, whether fruit pectin or the artificial kind, both of which allow the producer to substitute water for some of the fruit and much of the intensity. And so again this year, the best domestic line of preserves comes from American Spoon Foods.

Cost: $5.50 a jar, on average; more for the divine thimbleberry and other wild, handpicked fruit. MC, V.

Address: American Spoon Foods, 1668 Clarion Ave., PO Box 566, Petoskey, MI 49770. Telephone: (800) 222-5886 or (616) 347-9030.

Zingerman's is probably the best fancy-food shop and delicatessen between New York and San Francisco (it is in Ann Arbor, Mich.)--and in some ways, it is more discerning and energetic than my favorite stores on either coast. It specializes in farmhouse cheeses, olive oils, breads, and pastrami. Two recent discoveries, both of which are available at Zingerman's: Vallon de Genras hand-makes the most spectacular organic conserves in Aveyron, France, home of the famous feral child. Consisting only of whole fruit, unrefined organic cane sugar, and a little lemon juice, the apricot conserve is spectacular. Mary Keehn owns a goat farm in Humboldt County, Calif., an hour south of the Oregon border. In 1984 she started making a well-ripened, strong-tasting creamy goat cheese enclosed in a soft, fuzzy rind of white or blue mold and ash--in the European style--and shaped her cheeses as pyramids, logs, and compact squares. These fine cheeses were an instant commercial failure--in an America where tennis-ball mozzarella, pink processed-cheese slices, and bland, barely aged cheddar were still the norm. Two years ago Mary revived her mold-ripened, aged goat cheeses, and now she cannot make enough to satisfy demand in a considerably more sophisticated nation. My favorite is her Humboldt Fog in its large and long-aged version, because of its ideal balance of powerful mold and creamy pâte.

Cost: $9 for a 375-milliliter jar of the apricot conserve. $20 for a 1-pound wheel of Humboldt Fog. Two-day FedEx. AMEX, MC, V.

Address: Zingerman's, Attention Mail Order, 422 Detroit St., Ann Arbor, MI 48104. Telephone: (313) 769-1625. Fax: (313) 769-1235.

Vegetarians debate whether honey is a vegetable or an animal. Whatever. Mech Apiaries produce five incomparably aromatic raw honeys in Maple Valley, Wash., each with the perfume of the blossoms from which the bees gathered their nectar--huckleberry, fireweed, blackberry, raspberry, and rare maple blossom. Available at the Pike Place Market in Seattle and from Corti Brothers in Sacramento, Calif.

Cost: $4.39--a laughably low price--for 16-ounce jars of honey ($4.99 for the maple blossom). MC, V.

Address: Corti Brothers, 5810 Folsom Blvd., Sacramento, CA 95819. Telephone: (916) 736-3800.

The Martin family from Pennsylvania Dutch country has become a happy fixture at the Union Square Greenmarket in New York City with their wonderfully crisp, hand-twisted, hand-baked salted pretzels.

Cost: $14.95 for a reusable, bright red 1.75-pound tin; more economical are the 3-pound ($14.50) or 6-pound ($24.50) boxes. Shipping is included, but add $1.50 for each item sent west of the Mississippi. MC, V.

Address: Martin's Pretzel Bakery, PO Box 157, Philadelphia, NY 13673. Telephone: (315) 628-4927, Monday through Thursday. Friday: (315) 642-5794. Ask for Hannah Martin.

"A pig is nothing but an immense dish which walks while waiting to be served," wrote Charles Monselet. The most delicious ribs in the world are cooked by the Apple City BBQ team, which won first place in ribs in the Memphis championship three out of the past four years and in 13 of the 17 contests it entered in 1993. These are baby-back pork ribs, rubbed with spices and warm-smoked for six hours over hickory and apple wood. Co-captain Mike Mills owns the 17^th Street Bar & Grill in Murphysboro, Ill., where he fixes his ribs every day of the week and will ship them to you by FedEx.

Cost: $11.99 for a side of pork ribs, plus shipping. UPS overnight. MC, V.

Address: 17^th Street Bar & Grill, PO Box 382, 32 N. 17^th St., Murphysboro, IL 62966. Telephone: (618) 684-3722.

Paradise between two slices of seeded rye--this is the definition of pastrami, ideally a lean cut of beef from the shoulder (not the common blade or navel), dry-salted, spiced, and then hot-smoked. Pastrami is the Romanian answer to Southern barbecue, and you cannot do better than Pastrami King. Just steam a pound, or 2 or 3, for 20 minutes, scrape off the surface fat, and slice it up.

Cost: $15 for 1 pound. AMEX, MC, V.

Address: Pastrami King, 124-24 Queens Blvd., Kew Gardens, NY 11415. Telephone: (718) 263-1717.

Prunes for Christmas? Sure, when they come from Agen in Southwest France, the prune capital of the world, and are prepared by Chateau de Born. Various stuffings are available, but for the ultimate, intense, sweet, and unctuous prune epiphany, insist on pruneaux fourrés crème de pruneaux--prunes filled with cream of prunes.

Cost: $23.95 for a 9.5-ounce tin. MC, V.

Address: Available from Joie de Vivre, 2236 Country Manor Drive, Riverbank, CA 95367. Telephone: (800) 648-8854.

If, despite what I have said, you feel that prunes lack the joyful and celebratory image appropriate to Christmas, why not try dates--fresh dates, a day or two off the tree--plump, thin-skinned, bursting with sweetness and juice? Of the five date farms in the desert regions of Nevada and California whose fruits I have sampled, Four Apostles' Ranch and their choice, certified organic, medjool dates seem the tops this year.

Cost: $22 for a large tin of dates, $30 for a jumbo tin, including shipping. They will bill you with the shipment.

Address: Four Apostles' Ranch, 80-700 Ave. 38, Bermuda Dunes, CA 92203. Telephone: (619) 345-6171.

For a dessert fresh enough to restore your spirits on the day after, you will need your own supply of the most perfect apples I have ever eaten. Ron Mansfield at Goldbud Farms in the Sierra foothills is one of the most conscientious fruit growers in California--in summer, he leaves his peaches and nectarines to ripen on the tree until nearly the last minute, then fastidiously packs and ships them to those of us lucky enough to have telephoned him in advance. In fall and winter come apples of every description. His Fujis are the best, I think--crisp, sweet, brimming with sprightly flavor, beautiful to look at.

Cost: $32 for a single-layer gift box of 12 apples, including second-day FedEx; or approximately $45 for a more economical half-bushel (about 25 apples), packed in three layers with padding. MC, V.

Address: Goldbud Farms, 2501 Carson Road, Placerville, CA 95667. Telephone: (916) 626-6521. Fax: (916) 626-5149.

Gastronomy in America would be a pale imitation of the real thing without Ariane Daguin's sublime domestic Hudson River Valley foie gras (both raw and cooked) and game (both wild and farmed) from D'Artagnan.

Cost: $29.95 for a small 8.5-ounce terrine of foie gras mousse (pure foie gras whipped with air and a little water to go much farther), enough in little mounds for 20 small triangles of toast; or, for $11, try plump prunes soaked in Armagnac and stuffed with foie gras mousse (a package of six). And their rendered duck fat, a perfect frying medium for potatoes but previously sold only in 5-pound-minimum blocks, which occupy an entire shelf in my freezer, is available in cute 7-ounce tubs. $45.90 for a pound of raw foie gras; $75 a pound for a cooked terrine of pure foie gras; $6.75 a pound for a free-range male pheasant; $7.95 a pound for a female; $5.50 for a 7-ounce tub of duck fat. AMEX, MC, V.

Address: D'Artagnan, 399-419 St. Paul Ave., Jersey City, NJ 07306. Telephone: (800) DARTAGNAN or (201) 792-0748.

Tiny Olympia oysters, sweet and briny and miraculously fresh from Taylor United Inc., can be on your doorstep two days from now and in your mouth in a moment.

Cost: $2.95 for a dozen oysters plus $12 for shipping up to five dozen by UPS Blue Label. MC, V. Address: Taylor United Inc., SE 130 Lynch Road, Shelton, WA 98584. Telephone: (360) 426-6178. Fax: (360) 427-0327.

Having created the most delicious line of sausages in America, from traditional to postmodern, Bruce Aidells is not content to rest. His smoked chicken and apple is the most scrumptious yet--wonderfully savory, brimming with juice and, like all his products, containing less fat and filler than any others I have auditioned.

Cost: $45.95 is the average price for sausages in 5-pound single-flavor or sampler packs. MC, V.

Address: Aidells Sausage Co., Attention Mail Order Dept., 1625 Alvarado St., San Leandro, CA 94577. Telephone: (800) 546-5795. Fax: (510) 614-2846.

I'll bet that the best lamb in this country comes from Jamison Farm.

Cost: $75 for two legs or $70 for two racks of lamb (plus $9 for shipping); $135 for 24 loin chops. MC, V.

Address: Jamison Farm, 171 Jamison Lane, Latrobe, PA 15650-9400. Telephone: (800) 237-LAMB.

Two of my favorite vegetables are the sugar-cane plant and the cocoa bean. It saddens me to report that this year, as in so many others in the recent past, France has pulled further ahead of America (and the rest of the world) in the vital field of chocolate bonbons. The good news is that with every passing month, these Gallic treasures become easier to buy, directly from France or from shops in the United States.

For upscale candy bars, nobody can beat Fran's Chocolates of Seattle. My favorites: her Gold Bar and her Coconut Gold. You can conceptualize the Coconut Gold bar as an upwardly mobile Almond Joy with dark chocolate instead of milk, or as an ambitious Mounds Bar, with almonds stuck on top; Fran's coconut cream is blended with silky white chocolate. Her Gold Bars are soft, buttery caramel loaded with whole almonds (or macadamias) and dipped in fine dark Belgian chocolate.

Cost: $3.75, $10.50, and $18 respectively for gift boxes with two, six, or 12 bars of either flavor or a combination of the two. AMEX, MC, V.

Address: Fran's Chocolates, 2805 E. Madison Street, Seattle, WA 98112. Telephone: (800) 422-FRAN or (206) 322-0233.

Your gay friends will get a hearty Christmas chuckle from a package of Gay Bars, hefty four-inch triangles of good, solid, dark Guittard chocolate embossed with a stylish city skyline and wrapped in pink foil, from Linda Grisham Chocolates (they also offer buttercrunch, truffles, and chocolate bark made with fresh Vermont butter and cream). Gay Bars are gay both in that they are made by lesbians in Vermont, and also because they were designed to resemble the triangular pink paper badges that homosexuals were required to wear by the Third Reich. And when the New Year arrives and your spirits need a lift, you can use Gay Bars to more mischievous ends. Every morning, leave one on the desk of a seriously homophobic co-worker, or for even sharper sport, on the desk of someone you suspect of hiding the love that dares not speak its name.

Cost: $24.50 is very reasonable for holiday packages of 10 bars; it includes shipping. Gay Bars are available in green (mint), gold (milk), black (dark chocolate), lavender (roasted-almond dark chocolate), and the original Teutonic pink. MC, V.

Address: Linda Grisham Chocolates, PO Box 4513, Burlington, VT 05406. Telephone: (800) 862-5814. Fax: (802) 862-3412.

And now back to the really serious pleasures. Unlike the large, thick-walled, overly sweet, molded chocolates from Belgium, the great French chocolatiers produce small, mainly rectangular, bonbons dipped in the thinnest and finest of chocolate coatings and filled with fresh and perishable pralines and ganaches flavored with subtle and often experimental perfumes. No one else comes close--as I discovered by regularly sampling the highest rated Swiss, Italian, and U.S. alternatives. For French bonbon lovers, the Guide Julliard Des Croqueurs de Chocolat (Editions Julliard, Paris, 1994) is indispensable to threading your way through the thickets of theobroma. (Les Croqueurs de Chocolat is a club of French chocolate fanatics, including Sonia Rykiel, who have become the country's most authoritative amateur tasters.)

Cost: $25 for the guide, available at the address below.

Address: Kitchen Arts and Letters, 1435 Lexington Ave., New York, NY 10128. Telephone: (212) 876-5550.

Still first in the Croqueurs' hearts and mouths is La Maison du Chocolat (with five stores in Paris and one in New York City) and its leader, Robert Linxe. His creations are made from special Valrhona blends, and the fillings range from the expected (hazelnut ganache) to the unheard-of (ganache with saffron or star anise).

Cost: $52 a pound (plus overnight express) is average for gift boxes ordered directly from the New York store. Various sizes are available; $45 buys you 45 pieces, $65 buys 64 pieces, and so forth. AMEX, MC, V.

Address: La Maison du Chocolat, 25 East 73^rd St., New York, NY 10021. Telephone: (212) 744-7117. Fax: (212) 744-7141.

The most beautiful chocolates in the world come from Richart, whose delicate miniature squares are stenciled with red- or gold-tinted cocoa butter to reveal the flavor of the filling inside: pure malt scotch, green tea, thyme, arabica coffee, cloves, nutmeg, curry, chestnuts from the Ardèche, pineapple, bergamot, Piemontese hazelnuts, Andalusian almonds, candied clementines, black currants, minced cashews, anise. These are packed into flat, square white cardboard drawers of various sizes and sold individually or in little white chests holding from two to five drawers. My favorite is 64 of Richart's tiniest chocolates arranged gridwise in one large drawer, a breathtaking sight.

Cost: $49 for the 64-piece grid. (Ask for the 64 Petits Richards in the No. 4-size drawer.) AMEX, MC, V.

Address: Richart Design et Chocolat, 7 East 55^th St., New York, NY 10022. Telephone: (800) 742-4278.

A few dozen long-distance calls to France, and I discovered that four of its greatest chocolatiers will jet their creations directly to you by second-day courier. Testing their claims brought me a nearly endless supply of artful bonbons just as I was trying to choose among smoked salmons and caviars. Three survived the mail-and-taste test.

Jean-Paul Hévin, winner of the prestigious meilleur ouvrier de France decoration, makes bonbons with impossibly thin coatings that enclose conservatively flavored fillings (ganaches and pralines of mocha, nuts, and fruit) of a miraculous lightness and smoothness; he is one of the most admired confectioners of Paris (and expects to have made credit-card arrangements with VISA by the time this is published).

Address: Jean-Paul Hévin, 16, Avenue de la Motte-Picquet, 75007 Paris France. Telephone: (011)-33-1-43-54-09-85. Fax: (011)-33-1-45-55-87-33.

In Quiberon, Brittany (where salted butter caramels are traditional), Henri Le Roux refers to himself as a caramelier-chocolatier and encloses ganache fillings of green tea, mint, ginger, and bitter almonds in the finest covertures. MC, V.

Address: Le Roux, 18 Rue de Port-Maria, 56170 Quiberon, France. Telephone: (011)-33-97-50-06-83. Fax: 011-33-97-30-57-94.

And in Lyon, France's gastronomic capital, the world-famous Bernachon is the only remaining chocolatier that makes its own chocolate directly from the bean; its bonbons, both dipped and molded, are delicious in the most traditional manner. AMEX, MC, V.

Address: Bernachon, 42 Cours Franklin Roosevelt, 69006 Lyon, France. Telephone: (011)-33-78-24-37-98. Fax: (011)-33-78-52-67-77.

FedEx or DHL from France is quite expensive; order at least a kilo (2.2 pounds) of bonbons at a time to amortize the freight. Simply send a fax asking for a kilogram of assorted bonbons to be sent immediately by courier (FedEx or DHL) to yourself or someone else even luckier; give your credit-card number with expiration date, your telephone number, and the appropriate addresses--and follow up with a telephone call in a day or two to make sure that everything is in order. Expect to be charged between $60 and $70 a kilo, plus about $60 for courier or "chronopost" two-day service or $25 for regular French express airmain (six days).

Aficionados know that Caribbean cocoa beans are the most highly valued in the world, notable for their long, flowery finish. All great chocolate blends, like Valrhona's, require at least a touch of their perfume. Now El Rey America Inc. has begun making milk, bitter, and extra-bitter (70 percent cacao) chocolate entirely from Venezuelan beans. Today their cacao comes just from Carenero heirloom beans grown in the north-central region of the country; soon El Rey will add a line of chocolate made from the Rio Caribe beans of eastern Venezuela.

Chocolate is currently available only in commercial sizes, but will soon be sold in 100-gram and 400-gram bars.

Address: El Rey America Inc., PO Box 853, Fredricksburg, TX 78624. Telephone: (800) ELREY99.

Having recently sampled a thousand cookies, I can say three things with complete and utter confidence:

1) The best butter cookies in the world are the Galettes (not the Palets) from Le Cordon Bleu. Their sweet, deep buttery flavor is incomparable.

Cost: $13 for a very handsome deep-blue tin holding 36 cookies (12.3 ounces). AMEX, MC, V.

Address: Le Cordon Bleu, 404 Airport Executive Park, Nanuet, NY 10954. Telephone: (800) 457-2433.

2) The most perfect packaged chocolate-chip cookies, as good as what you could make if you modified the directions on the Nestle's package in just the right ways, are baked at Kathleen's Bake Shop in Southampton on Long Island.

Cost: $3.90 for 8 ounces (10 cookies) in a pale-blue bag; $24 for 1.5 pounds in a round tin.

Address: Kathleen's Bake Shop, 43 North Sea Road, Southampton, NY 11968. Telephone: (516) 283-7153.

3) At the cutting edge of the cookie universe, forever pushing the biscuit envelope, are the Japanese. Osembei are large, thin, roundish tea cookies with paper-thin slices of dried fruit (orange, kiwi, pineapple, apple) baked into their surface. Each cookie is sealed in its own white plastic wrapper, then stacked side by side in a huge shiny silver tin that holds 100 of them.

Cost: $50 at the address below. AMEX, MC, V.

Address: Available at Felissimo, 10 West 56 St., New York, NY 10019. Telephone: (212) 247-5656.

Similar to Osembei, but baked from a sweeter batter, wrapped in tissue paper, and containing "the three famous vegetables of Kyoto"--leaf buds, lotus root, and burdock--are Suetomi Vegetable Cookies from Takeshimaya in New York City (cost: $35 for a long silver 4.59-ounce tin); leaf pies: delicious, flaky, individually wrapped, stylized leaves made of many-layered pastry, crunchy and sugary, packed into a lovely pink-beige tin (cost: $25 for 5 ounces); and rice crackers in many forms, and several other cookies that I did not enjoy at all. AMEX, MC, V.

Address: Takeshimaya, 693 Fifth Ave., New York, N.Y.10022. Telephone: (800) 753-2038.

Read your way into the New Year with the most respected, original, and scholarly food magazine published today. Handsomely printed in England by Alan and Jane Davidson, PPC (which stands for Petits Propos Culinaires) arrives three times a year, full of articles, notes, and letters by the most thoughtful and obsessed food writers at work today. The PPC's 50^th issue last year included an article by food-science expert Harold McGee about what happens to eggs when you cook them for 12 hours; pieces about chowders, Velazquez, trifles, preserved lemons, and food scenes in medieval calendars; and letters about ketchup, and a possible historical connection between the gerde of Turkestan and the bagel.

Cost: $45, by check only, made payable to PPC North America, for a six-issue, two-year subscription.

Address: Petits Propos Culinaires, 45 Lamont Road, London SW10 0HU, England.

Has all that Christmas caroling made you hoarse? Are you weary of Nat "King" Cole? Keep the tuneful Christmas spirit going with Joy World's Musical Candle, an astounding little Korean-made device resembling a candy-striped birthday-cake candle on a conical plastic base. Light the wick, and it plays a tinny yet joyous 30-second medley of "Jingle Bells," "Santa Claus is Coming to Town," and "We Wish You a Merry Christmas," over and over and over.

Cost: $3.50 a candle.

Address: Joy World Inc., 708 Walnut Drive, Franklin Lakes, NJ 07417. Telephone: (800) 753-6595. Personal checks only.