For your birthday, she bakes you cookies or pineapple upside down cakes. He whips up a gourmet meal from scratch, arranging slices of beef Wellington on square, white plates with a flourish of peppercorn sauce. But what do you do for them on their birthdays? How do you help the foodie in your life celebrate their own momentous occasions?

Perhaps you've tried gift certificates to restaurants, or measuring spoons shaped like chickens. Perhaps you've eyed La Creuset pots or given up entirely and gone for a bottle of wine. But you haven't looked at Cloud 9 Living, which is why you've struggled all this time.

Here's the thing. Most gifts are just things, and at a certain point, people run out of space or need for things. Take my sister and brother-in-law, for instance. As chefs, they've already accumulated all the accoutrements for the thing that brings them joy. They have all the fancy pots and pans, all the primo wine-openers, the Japanese knives, the colored cutting boards, and when they go out to eat, they don't need a gift certificate because they're already on a first-name basis with the chef.

So what do I get these two? An experience, in the form of a gift. Called adventure gifts or experience gifts, these are memories in the making, little excursions into the world of kayaking or Pike's Place Market or stock car driving or, in this case, gustatory wonders. This couple may have the Joy of Cooking down pat, but sushi remains something to be prepared for others--until now.

Through Cloud 9 Living, I can give them a sushi-making lesson for two. Like date night with a twist, they'll work with a private chef in their own home learning the history, etiquette and terminology of the craft. My sister'll learn how to make her California rolls without having to go out, and her husband can work on something a little more adventurous from the fish market.

Or maybe I ought to send them into Trendy Cocktails 101, learning from head mixologists how to infuse lavender and saffron into their liquors, how to incorporate frothy egg white into a cocktail. Or chocolate-making classes, bellied-up to a double-boiler melting butter and cacao and pouring it all into seashell molds.

Denverites themselves, they're certainly familiar with their own city but what about New York? A culinary tour of New York's trendy NoLIta neighborhood, tasting their way through the various Mexican, Chinese, Italian, Vietnamese and French restaurants might add a new spice to their repertoire. Or perhaps an evening out wine-tasting would be best, after all. The two of them could settle in at a bistro, sniffing and sipping a tailor-made, one-of-a-kind wine-pairing dinner while hearing the history of each glass.

All of these are perfect gift experiences for couples, of course, but best of all for foodies. And the greatest thing about them (and the 1700 other experiences Cloud 9 Living offers) is that they give something more poignant, more lasting, more inspiring than any single thing can: a memory. Together they'll build another a memory to share, learning a new art, tasting new concoctions, cobbling together one more tie to bind them closer. Find me a wine-stopper that does that.