Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Choosing A Gourmet Food Gift Basket

By Teresa Joseph

When you are planning to buy a gourmet food gift basket for that someone special, whatever the occasion may be, you need to take several things into consideration before you buy. Specifically, when you decide on a basket, you are deciding on foods that are usually served for special occasions. That makes it difficult to predict the quantity of variety of foods to include.

Be sure you know how many people the basket will ultimately serve. Since foods are perishable, you really want to know if you are dealing with a couple of people or a sizable group of people. Knowing the number of people, you can now size the basket appropriately. You will want the basket, when filled, to look overflowing. So, size it a bit smaller than what you think you need. After you have sized your basket, pick a color that is appropriate for the occasion and attractive.

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Now that you have your basket, the fun part begins. What to put into the gourmet food gift basket? The options are endless.

Beverages If you are going to include beverages, wines are a great choice. Even if the recipients don't drink alcohol, you can substitute a nice sparkling cider. Otherwise, you could go with coffee and tea selections. Herbal teas are very popular these days. Mugs are a nice complement to baskets that have coffee or tea.

Cheese Cheese is also a great choice to put into your gourmet food gift basket because they come in all shapes, colors and sizes. And you can't have cheese with bread or crackers - I mean the fancy kind of course. Be sure that cheese and cracker style baskets come with nice decorative plates and flatware.

Fruit You can have fruit in its own gift basket or to augment another basket item. The best fruit selections are fresh fruits including apples, pears, and oranges but don't overlook exotic dried fruits, berries, and nuts.

Sweets At this point, you may not have realized the great many choices in gourmet food gift baskets. Well, there's more. How about sweets? Baskets can contain items like cookies, gourmet desserts, muffins, jams, and jellies. What is especially popular lately are gourmet chocolate gift baskets.

As you can see, sizing up the basket is the easy part while deciding on how to fill it can be overwhelming. You can mix some or all of the above-mentioned items or have a basket that focuses on just one type of item. The world is your basket. Consider the personality, likes and dislikes of your main recipient(s).

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