The picnic basket is the most ubiquitous of all classic American icons. Other pop culture icons of a bygone era like the the 1967 Corvette have been replaced by newer versions which despite being hailed as faster, safer and better manage to fail at retaining the olde world charm that the classics had. The picnic basket, though it has gone from being made out of wicker to food grade plastic doesn’t suffer from that problem thankfully. While baskets may seem like a minor convince they really complete the ideal picture of a picnic. I don’t remember a single picnic that I ever went to as a child where the basket wasn’t the centre of attraction — atleast it was when everyone was done playing softball.
The benefits of the modern plastic are many and the seem more like evolutionary increases when compared to wicker baskets. The thing about wicker is that unlike plastic it isn’t as healthy as one would think of it to be. Unlike plastic baskets, which you can just walk into a store and buy a food-grade version of, wicker isn’t that versatile. The thing is that you will constantly end up worrying about the health of your family and yourself which is no way to live. Cleaning a wicker basket is an exercise in itself and if you fail to do it properly you end up with a pretty dire list of consequences. Namely, we are looking at fungus, mold and spores which can all grow inside your wicker basket.
While food will rot if you leave it inside a plastic basket as well, but the basket itself won’t end up heading in that direction. This means that you can always rinse the basket with anti-sceptic detergent and you will be golden. Plastic picnic baskets also tend to last a lot longer than their wicker counterparts and are water proof. Wicker on the other hand responds poorly to moisture and this is something you should consider if you are looking to carry around juice or champagne to the next picnic.
The fact that you may like the rustic look of the wicker baskets shouldn’t stop you from ordering a plastic basket that looks just like its organic brethren. With the way plastics and moulding technology have advanced it is only natural that something like this would have happened — the elegance of wicker and the convince of plastic combined into one easy to use product!
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