Looking For Unique Gifts? Try Giving Gourmet Gift Baskets

Everyone knows how crowded shopping malls can get during gift-giving seasons like Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving, and Halloween. Have you ever braved the crowds and fought through the mob just to find unique gifts before the store shelves ran out? If you wanted to give somebody a gift for Easter, what can you give besides Easter Eggs and chocolate? Should you give a dressed turkey for Thanksgiving? What ghoulish treat can you give somebody for Halloween?

These are occasions that really make your head hurt when you try to think of appropriate gifts, especially when there are so many choices to consider. Add that to the fact that everyone in town troop to the malls with one mission in mind – to buy presents for their loved ones. Going through aisle after aisle of gift ideas can really make your head spin. And when you think you've found the perfect gift item, you find another good choice on the way to the cashier!

Instead of anguishing over which gift to buy all over again, why not consider getting a gift basket instead? A gift basket contains more than one closely-related gift items, which is a lot more likely to put a smile on your recipient's face. Gift baskets are easy to find and fun to prepare, and it's a good opportunity to show just how much you care.

What's more, you can take things up a notch and present gourmet gift baskets, too. A gourmet gift basket contains several food and beverage items that are suited for the occasion. Here are a few tips on how to come up with a memorable gift basket for the year's major occasions.

1.) Easter

The first special event of the year is the celebration of Easter. This event is holy and important for most Christians as this signifies that death and resurrection of Jesus. Unfortunately, gift giving during this occasion can be quite tricky. This event doesn’t offer a lot of gift choice unlike the wide range that you have during the Christmas season.

When you talk about Easter, it’s always the bunny and eggs that come to mind. Fortunately you can play around with this theme to come up with your own version of an Easter gift basket. If you are planning to give an Easter gift basket to an adult friend, you can always gather something to help them prepare the Easter dinner party – a bottle of wine, cheese, or a variety of sweets and chocolates for dessert.

Easter gift baskets containing sweets, chocolates, and Easter eggs are common, but they're always a great gift to receive. Just be careful when giving Easter sweets to a diabetic recipient, though. Be extra thoughtful and only fill the basket with sugar-free sweets, and your recipient will love keeping up with everyone else in satisfying their seasonal sweet teeth.

Children will love baskets of sweets, too – they're likely to see it as a gourmet gift basket too, much better than any other gift they're going to receive from the Easter bunny!

2.) Halloween

The next major event to prepare for is the Halloween season, when all you see are ghosts and ghouls that hang outside the houses. Trick-or-treating is the highlight of every kid’s social calendar, so you can pretty much imagine what the kids in costumes consider the best gourmet gift basket there is.

A Halloween gourmet gift basket is one of the easiest gift baskets you can prepare. During this season, shopping malls will have lots of plastic baskets made to look like carved jack-o-lanterns. These make great baskets to put sweets and other gift items in! Make sure you grab a few and fill them with candy for your young recipients. You can also include a horror storybook or a Halloween activity book to make the seasons stimulating to both their tongues and minds.

Adults would appreciate some more mature gourmet gift baskets in Halloween, such as those containing wines, cheese, special breads, butter, and chocolate. Couples may also enjoy the wine with a few good DVD's after the kids have gone to bed, so you may want to consider buying a few good titles for a movie-going pair.

3.) Thanksgiving

Towards the end of November, households all over the country prepare for the Thanksgiving dinner. The center of attraction in every dinner table is, of course, the roast turkey. A great gourmet gift basket would help the recipient fill the table with great food and beverage items that complement the turkey and cranberry sauce.

If you know someone who'll be throwing a good Thanksgiving dinner soon, you might want to give them a gift basket filled with a few bottles of good wine (white wine goes best with turkey, although some nice reds might come in handy, especially if you know your recipient will be serving red meats like beef and veal), some sauces, chocolate, cashew nuts, and pasta dressing. You can go wild with your Thanksgiving gourmet gift basket – it's hard to go wrong in a season of food.

4.) Christmas

Another season that's marked with lots of food is Christmas, the most wonderful time of the year! Families will have different menus for their Christmas dinner, but you can pretty much bet that meat will be on top of the list. While roast turkey is the highlight of the Thanksgiving season, Christmas will see a lot more red meat on American dinner tables – and a great Christmas gourmet gift basket complements (or tops off) a sumptuous dinner.

As usual, nothing makes a gift basket more appealing than a bottle of good wine (or two, or three...) for your recipient to enjoy. A good red wine such as Pinot Noir will go well with any "meat" main course, and it's light enough to be enjoyed even with white meats such as turkey and fowl. A Christmas gourmet gift basket may also contain some almond roca, some cheese spread, cashews, crackers, and chocolate.

Of course, the flashier the items in your gourmet gift basket are, the more impact it'll have on your recipient. But remember that the more you know about your recipient, the more they'll like your food and beverage choices. As with every other kind of gift, it's the thought that counts!

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