Figuring out what to get friends and family can be a challenge, and the closer it gets to Christmas Eve, the greater the likelihood you’ll make panicked purchases that leave the giver and giftee in agreement on one thing: oh, you shouldn’t have.

But there is one thing that none of us seems to have enough of, and that’s time (well, technically, there are two things most of us feel we don’t have enough of; the other is money, which, of course, makes a great gift, too.)

And yet, we all have to eat. We’d like to eat well, but time pressures force us to fuel our bodies with only slightly more thought than it takes to fuel our cars (and, sadly, with almost as much oil.)

So a gadget that saves time in the kitchen makes a great gift. Who wouldn’t like to wake up in the morning with the coffee and oatmeal already made? Spend a few minutes to set things up the night before, and you’ll have a nice jump on the morning rush.

There are lots of good coffee makers on the market with a built-in timer, starting at about $40 and up. If tea is more your cup of tea, how about a hot water dispenser to make any kind of tea you like? It’s a popular Asian appliance, and sometimes features a second, slightly lower setting just for green tea, which should never be made with boiling water. The best hot water dispensers even have a third setting for warming baby formula; what a great gift for new parents!

Another great Asian appliance is the rice cooker, which not only gives you perfect rice every time, but also makes pilafs, polentas, risottos and puddings. A decent rice cooker with a digital timer, or “fuzzy logic,”starts at $100 or so; let it make your morning with a batch of steel cut oats, corn grits, or some multigrain porridge that you love but never have time to cook.

With a slow cooker or crock pot, you can take those precious minutes you save in the morning to get a head start on that evening’s meal. I don’t have one myself, but I hear you can just throw your ingredients into it, set the timer, and come home to a savory stew (Santa may bring me a slow cooker this Christmas, but I’ve been so bad, who knows?) Slow cookers start at about $30.

My favorite solution to time pressures in the kitchen is, ironically, the pressure cooker. People seem to think they’re some kind of Improvised Explosive Device, and it’s true that a pressure cooker can blow you away, but only in the sense that you’ll be saying, “Why doesn’t everybody own one of these?”

I use my pressure cooker nearly every day, sometimes twice a day. It lets me cook dried beans in a matter of minutes, instead of taking hours and having to soak them overnight. Brown rice takes half the time, along with any other grain you can think of and some you’ve never heard of, say, farro or kamut. You can cook all kinds of vegetables as well; it gives you perfect beets and tender collards or kale in ten minutes or less.

A pressure cooker lets you make whole meals in minutes, too, like a slow cooker on fast forward. There are a number of cookbooks written just for pressure cookers, with recipes for fast, easy, healthy and tasty soups and stews. Pressure cookers start at around $50, but the best ones can easily run $100 and up.

For non-cooks who eat out and order in, you could get the latest guide to the best local restaurants, or a fancy binder to store all those take-out menus in.

If you have any breatharians [1] on your shopping list, I’d recommend some kind of aromatherapy product, say, a vanilla or citrus scented soy candle. Something to make them nostalgic about food. After all, it’s the thought that counts.

Image credit: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division ©1925