Gourmet Gift Baskets Impress Your Business Contacts

If you're used to thinking of gift baskets as cheap woven containers of semi-fresh fruit, you may be interested to discover just how creative gift baskets have become. There's something for everyone, and it's not even limited to food items.

FOR GOLFING FANATICS:
Got a client who loves to golf? Get him or her a golf-themed gift basket. Most include some gourmet treats, perfect for snacking on the green. But many of them also include great accessories, such as a putting cup, club cleaner, tee, ball marker, towel or golf club brush. The food may be gone by the end of the day, but the accessories will stick around, and remind your business associate of you.

FOR GARDENERS:

Most gardener gift baskets have a bit of a feminine theme, but many are neutral. Some include food, and most include accessories and tools like gardening gloves, seed packets, gardening tools, hand and nail cream.

FOR SPA AND AROMATHERAPY ENTHUSIASTS:

You'll find a terrific variety of spa, beauty and aromatherapy gift baskets available. Go with a scent theme, or choose one that includes soothing teas. Accessories can include such items as: wooden massager, back scrubber or soft hand towel.

FOR EVERYBODY:

You can never go wrong with groumet food and drink gift baskets - not with so many to choose from! If an elaborate, expensive champagne and caviar basket is outside your budget, go for simple with Shari's Berries, or a single bottle of Dom Perignon with some chocolate dipped apricot. These combinations are far more affordable, but speak just as eloquently to your good taste, which people will want to associate themselves with.

Why cheesecakes make the perfect gift

Cheesecake makes a perfect gift. There are guidelines that should be followed when choosing the perfect gift. For one thing, the gift should be chosen specifically for a certain individual whose tastes are known to you. If you are not well acquainted with the recipient, you must give a general-type of gift that will not offend. Another guideline for choosing the perfect gift is that the gift must fit, and most important, if the recipient doesn't like the gift, it must be passed on to someone else.

Do you know anyone who doesn't like cheesecake and wouldn't consider it the perfect gift? For gift-giving occasions the ultimate gift is one that is adored and can be shared with others, and this makes cheesecake the perfect gift. Even if the recipient is on a low fat, no fat, no sugar or no
carb diet, cheesecake is the perfect gift because it can be made to adhere to almost any diet by carefully choosing the ingredients. In today's society there is almost no limit to the availability and variety of ingredients that go into a cheesecake.

Can you imagine the pleasure on the face of that special someone on whom you have bestowed a freshly made cheesecake? Add a few different toppings such as a variety of fruit toppings and streusels to adorn the cheesecake and you have created the perfect cheesecake gift. There are different varieties of cheesecakes such as the original New
York Cheesecake, which is probably the most well known of all the varieties.

Create a cheesecake in your own kitchen and present it in a special dish to a special person. When you see the pleasure on their face, you'll know that cheesecake makes the perfect gift.
Send a Cheesecake to someone special today.

Culinary Traditions Of France

French cuisine is the amazingly high standard to which all other native cuisines must live up to. The country of France is home of some of the finest cuisine in the world, and it is created by some of the finest master chefs in the world. The French people take excessive pride in cooking and knowing how to prepare a good meal. Cooking is an essential part of their culture, and it adds to one's usefulness if they are capable of preparing a good meal.

Each of the four regions of France has a characteristic of its food all its own. French food in general requires the use of lots of different types of sauces and gravies, but recipes for cuisine that originated in the northwestern region of France tend to require the use a lot of apple ingredients, milk and cream, and they tend to be heavily buttered making for an extremely rich (and sometimes rather heavy) meal. Southeastern French cuisine is reminiscent of German food, heavy in lard and meat products such as pork sausage and sauerkraut.

On the other hand, southern French cuisine tends to be a lot more widely accepted; this is generally the type of French food that is served in traditional French restaurants. In the southeastern area of France, the cooking is a lot lighter in fat and substance. Cooks from the southeast of France tend to lean more toward the side of a light olive oil more than any other type of oil, and they rely heavily on herbs and tomatoes, as well as tomato-based products, in their culinary creations.

Cuisine Nouvelle is a more contemporary form of French cuisine that developed in the late 1970s, the offspring of traditional French cuisine. This is the most common type of French food, served in French restaurants. Cuisine Nouvelle can generally be characterized by shorter cooking times, smaller food portions, and more festive, decorative plate presentations. Many French restaurant cuisines can be classified as Cuisine Nouvelle, but the more traditional French restaurant cuisine would be classified as Cuisine du Terroir, a more general form of French cooking than Cuisine Nouvelle. Cuisine du Terroir is an attempt to return to the more indigenous forms of French cooking, especially with reference to regional differences between the north and south, or different areas such as the Loire Valley, Catalonia, and Rousillon. These are all areas famous for their specific specialty of French cuisine. As time has progressed, the difference between a white wine from the Loire Valley and a wine from another area has slowly diminished, and the Cuisine du Terroir approach to French cooking focuses on establishing special characteristics between regions such as this.

As part of their culture, the French incorporate wine into nearly every meal, whether it is simply as a refreshment or part of the recipe for the meal itself. Even today, it is a part of traditional French culture to have at least one glass of wine on a daily basis.