Longaberger's Patriotic American Baskets

What a pile of beautiful, American-made Longaberger Baskets!  Decorating for any holiday might begin with "Hmmmmmm. Which baskets should I use?" for a Longaberger collector.  Of course, many collectors keep this group out all year, but I have so many others I also want to enjoy.

Yes, this is a confusing jumble of baskets representing at least 20 years of All-American and other monthly feature baskets, but that's a good problem to have.  Even the big, patriotic Wash Day and Block Party Baskets are enlisted to help carry Uncle Sams and other patriotic decor.

Picnic with Any Longaberger Basket

Packing a picnic to finish your family's outdoor fun is a big part of summer, and a picnic isn't a picnic without a Longaberger Basket to carry it.  And the best part . . . it doesn't need to be a Picnic Basket!  Of course, Longaberger's traditional Picnic Basket is a wonderful one, but sometimes you don't need a basket that big.  Perhaps it's just you and your child or a friend picnicking, and a smaller basket would be better.  With Longaberger, never let the baskets' names limit their uses.

One good picnic basket alternative is a Longaberger Magazine Basket.  This narrower basket fits perfectly on the floorboard behind the seat in your car and is the same size and shape as the basket JW Longaberger wove called the Bread & Milk Basket.  In JW's time, it was called an automobile basket, designed to fit between a vehicle's two front bucket seats.  It could carry loaves of bread, bottles of milk, and all sorts of combinations of the two.  I'm sure it would carry your picnic in style!  


Any Longaberger Market Basket, Cake Basket, or Pie Basket will be perfect for your picnic, depending on the size needed.  Longaberger's retired lidded Purse Baskets could even carry your picnic-for-one (aka your lunch!) to work with you.  With a plastic protector, you can include an ice pack to keep cool items cool, including your drinks.  Of course, you can find plenty of picnickable baskets in my eBay store right now!


I subscribed to Mary Janes Farm a few months ago, a fun and colorful magazine, and when I excitedly opened my first issue, I found a story featuring picnicking with an eye-grabbing photo of  . . . Longaberger's Big Basket!  I knew right away that this was the magazine for me.  The helpful article included recipes and ways to improve your picnic basket.  

Looking Back at Longaberger's Big Basket

Although The Longaberger Company has suspended operations and faces an uncertain future, it is still an American story of success against most odds.  CBS's Sunday Morning took a look at the company a few years ago as they were leaving the corporate headquarters Dave had created, a seven-story Medium Market Basket. Leaving the Big Basket, as we lovingly called it, was hard for all of us, both the corporate employees who worked there and the Home Consultants across the company who loved what it stood for:  Dave's dream.  This video is bittersweet, reminding us of wonderful times the loyal sales field enjoyed for so many years but foreshadowing the beginning of the end.  I hope you'll enjoy the video, and I hope someday we will be celebrating a comeback of The Longaberger Company under ethical Ohio leadership.

Paper Towels in a Longaberger Basket

In a kitchen full of baskets, a basket holding paper towels is no surprise.  This Heartland Bakery Basket has leather "ears," or loops, on each side, making it perfect for hanging from two cup hooks under my cabinet.  Paper towels roll out easily and are up off the counter  The Bakery Basket is made on the same form and is the same size as the traditional favorite Bread Basket, so it can also be taken down and turned to duty in serving.

Longaberger offered several baskets in the Heartland weave in the 1990s. Heartland Baskets had an added shoestring weave in Dresden blue, which was stained over and also sometimes appeared gray, black, or green.  They also featured a special woodburn on bottom that included a barn.

Longaberger's All-American Pie

Don't you love this fun, patriotic look?  It's quick and easy to complete, and your friends and family will enjoy it this summer.  I wish the picture better showed my patriotic Longaberger Grandma Bonnie's Pie Plate (you can barely see the tops of some of the navy stars inside the rim), but any Longaberger Pie Plate will work perfectly.  

This All-American Pie was featured in Longaberger's Collector's Club Connection (May 2016), and as the writer says, "It allows you to express your patriotism in a fun and tasty way."  Kids and grandkids might enjoy helping put this pie together for a family celebration.  As you'll see, I used the easy version of everything, and it turned out fine with no stress. 

Line a pie plate with your favorite crust--I used Pillsbury refrigerated crusts.  Fill with two cans of cherry pie filling (I used Lucky Leaf Premium Filling in 21-ounce cans and got many compliments), trying to keep it away from the top left one-fourth as much as possible. Add blueberry pie filling (more Lucky Leaf, for me) to fill in the blue field in the top left corner.  You won't use the entire can.  The original instructions said to spread the cherry filling evenly everywhere and then cover with a thin layer of blueberry on the upper left, but I didn't do that.  As thick as this pie filling is, I was able to add the two fillings in their own places and smooth it together easily. 

Cut another crust into stars and stripes.  I have a Pampered Chef "Creative Cutters Set" that has 8 small, very-useful shapes, and I used the especially-handy star shape here. I used a pizza cutter to cut the stripes and then assembled them on the pie to look like Old Glory.  I baked the pie for 45-50 minutes at 350 degrees and had to broil it for a brief moment at the end (watch it closely!) to lightly brown my stars and stripes.

Especially delicious served warm with vanilla ice cream, this is a great pie!  I'm sure it's good cold, too, if there is any left by then.

Longaberger's Collector's Club has long featured special products, mostly baskets, that were unique examples of American craft. For an annual membership fee, members had the opportunity to purchase those products and received a special publication too. The Collector's Club Connection was a magazine for Club members that in recent years had become an online magazine.  This was especially fun because the stories could be very timely.  The photography and ideas were always fun and fresh.  Michael Kennedy has been a wonderful and very creative director of Longaberger's Collectors Club, known more recently as The Club.

If you are interested in other recipes created in Longaberger Woven Traditions Pottery, click on the "Recipes" label below this post.  All recipes I have posted about in the past will come up.  You can also click on "Older Posts" at the bottom of the page and keep clicking back through many pages of posts.

The Longaberger Company

Have you heard that Longaberger has gone out of business?  There has been no official company statement saying that; consultants did receive an email that no new orders can be taken.  It has been a month now since that email was sent, and no further information or signs of progress have been issued. 

On May 3, 2018, The Longaberger Company suspended operations in Ohio.  No one has been weaving, shipping, or answering Customer Service calls or emails since then, as all operations were affected.  JRJR Networks in Dallas, TX purchased a controlling share of the company from Tami Longaberger in 2013 and also purchased several other direct sales companies.  One of those companies in the UK is currently experiencing difficulties, allowing the lender to sweep cash from all of the companies and leaving Longaberger with no operating funds.  Many of the other JRJR Network companies are not currently functioning.

Longaberger had just returned all operations to the Dresden, Ohio area this spring, with facility upgrades completed in March or April, and was hopeful that the smaller new/old home would give the company the opportunity to move ahead with lower overhead costs. They never really had the chance to see the benefits of that change.  

Hopefully Longaberger will be able to reopen with local Ohio ownership and leadership and use those revamped facilities, but it will probably be a slow process.  Fortunately for Longaberger fans, there are many, many mint-condition retired Longaberger products to enjoy in the meanwhile.