3 unexpected gifts for your Easter basket

Cadbury eggs, foil-wrapped Hershey’s chocolate eggs and various flavors and shapes of Peeps have been filling store shelves for weeks in preparation for Easter Sunday. But why stick with the ordinary? Consider one of these for that Easter basket.

Your child isn’t a fan of hard-cooked eggs, but you don’t want to fill the basket with a bunch of sugary treats? An alternative is the Easter Pear Decorating Kit from Harry & David, which comes with six of the company’s Royal Verano Pears and a set of food-safe stickers for decorating. It’s $29.99 at www.harryanddavid.com, although you’ll need to choose expedited shipping to ensure delivery by Sunday.

Spiral-sliced hams have become an Easter standard, but Smithfield has introduced a couple of offbeat twists. This year the company is offering its Smokehouse Reserve Baked Apple Spice ham, joining the Salted Caramel Spiral Sliced Smoked Ham and more conventional flavors. The company said both are available at Winco, which has two stores in the valley (they cost $4.18 a pound), and the latter at Albertsons.

Wal-Mart and Peeps seem to have an affinity. Earlier this season the mega-retailer was offering Peeps-flavored Oreos, which quickly sold out. Still available, at least in some stores, are Mystery Peeps, with Wal-Mart the exclusive source for the third year in a row. Available in three flavors, the chicks are all white, decorated with dots in purple and blue, orange and yellow or green and yellow. (This week it was revealed the flavors are maple syrup, blueberry and grape slush.) They’re $1.12 for a package of 10.

#ICYMI watch as @GMA reveals this year’s @Walmart #MysteryPEEPS flavors! Did you guess correctly? pic.twitter.com/4XAsTsAK9M

— PEEPS® Brand (@PEEPSBrand) April 10, 2017