Monday, December 22, 2008

Wine and Cheese Gift Basket

By Vina Zevigny

My family has been exchanging gifts with our neighbors for years and it has become difficult to think of a unique and interesting gift. A perfect gift for anybody is one of the lovely wine and cheese gift baskets that are available at many retail stores. They make great gifts for friends, family, co-workers and neighbors. If you find the pre-made baskets unappealing it is fun and easy to assemble your own selections to make a very personalized gift.

The pre-made cheese gift baskets included processed cheese spreads. We were concerned about how long some of the baskets had been sitting around. We thought that if we made our own baskets the cheese would be of higher quality and we could choose varieties that we knew our friends liked.

It is easy to find attractive baskets for the personalized wine and cheese basket. They can be found at many craft or import stores at reasonable prices. Find an inexpensive cheese cutter to place in the basket as well. You can purchase your cheese selection at any quality deli. Since the meat departments only wrap their products in unattractive paper you can wrap the cheese in plastic wrap. During the holidays it is easy to find holiday design plastic wrap. Next, select the wine to be included. Boxes of specialty crackers are all that is really needed to finish this off. Once you have all the items assembled, place some shredded paper in the bottom of the basket. This serves as perfect filler.

Once the cheese is wrapped, put the filler in the basket and arrange all the items. Use the filler to cushion the bottle of wine and make the basket look nice and full. You can wrap the entire basket in cellophane wrap, but it is not absolutely necessary. Finish it off with some curling ribbon and you are ready to go. Keep in mind that you will have to keep it refrigerated. This is one of the main reasons that the ready made wine and cheese gift baskets incorporate the processed cheeses.

The neighbors all liked receiving these lovely wine and cheese gift baskets. Some of them used them for entertaining while others kept them all to themselves. We decided that they were such a hit with our neighbors that we are going to start giving these baskets to our families as well. If storage is an issue, just pre-wrap the cheeses and assemble the baskets right before the gift exchange. Whether you select one of the pre-made wine and cheese gift baskets or create your own it will be a gift that is loved by the recipient. - 15359

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