Here is something that you might use in your New Year’s celebration. This video will show you a few variations on how to make an easy fancy carrot garnish.

You can your carrot garnishes in cocktails for your New Year’s Eve celebration. Add a cherry and an orange slice  to use in any tropical drink. Add a lime wedge for adding to a Mojito or Cosmo. Add a lime wedge and green olive with your carrot garnish on a long skewer and add to a Bloody Mary for New Year’s brunch. Add just an olive to add to a martini.

These carrot garnishes are also pretty additions to non- alcoholic beverages for your New Year’s brunch. You can add to fresh pressed carrot juice or fruit smoothies. continue reading…

Here is a creative use of watermelon carving for the Christmas season. A Watermelon Santa. It was done by fruit carver Yenny Medalith Caldas Garcia.

Sometimes we just don’t have time for vegetable carving. So, here is a super simple way to quickly dress up a dish of yams for Thanksgiving. Just add yam and sweet potato flowers to the top of your marshmallow covered yams. continue reading…

Today is November 20 and I still have on display a carved white pumpkin lantern that I made on Halloween. That was October 31. So this pumpkin is now 21 days old! I’m finally about ready to throw it out. Amazingly, it is only now starting to get a little bit moldy on the inside. I’ve been keeping in on the table unrefrigerated all this time!

This is a huge contrast to the common orange pumpkins that I carved on the same day. Those got really black with mold on the inside within only 3 or 4 days.

Watch the video to see how this white pumpkin lantern has changed from day 1 to day 18. continue reading…

Create Vegetable and Fruit Carvings that your Guests will Talk about and Remember

Learn Secrets that professional vegetable and fruit carving experts have used for years.

• Learn How to Avoid the 5 Most Common and Costly Mistakes made by Beginning Fruit Carvers that make the difference between Success and Failure.
• Step by step fruits carving instructions show you exactly how to create memorable garnishes and spectacular centerpieces more easily than you dreamed possible.
• Detailed Video Instructions that show action details that books with photos and words cannot communicate.
• We begin with simple elegant vegetables and fruit carvings that you can make in minutes with tools that you already own.
• Video demonstrations proceed to show you how you can create the same  elegant results seen on cruise ships and in five star restaurants without having to spend years in a culinary academy.
• You will learn about the most important “must have” vegetables and fruit carving tool that will give you the spectacular results that you see in traditional thai fruit carving.
• Video demonstrations of how to use additional vegetable and fruits carving tools that combined with the techniques we teach will give you WOW results while saving you time.
• How to select the best vegetables and fruits for the best carving results.
• How to keep your vegetable and fruit carvings fresh looking until ready to display, and learn which fruits and vegetables that you can carve days in advance of your event.
• You’ll also learn fast and fun carvings that will have your children happily eating more healthy fruits and vegetables.
• Our video vegetables and fruits carving instructions are even better than taking a live class because you can refer to them time and time again on your own schedule at your convenience in the comfort of your own kitchen.

To Get Your Free Lesson Now, simply sign in below.

To Learn More about our Vegetable and Fruit Carving 101, eleven week online course click here.

I’ve just recently added a few new fruit carving knives and tools to the site. You can see them all at our SHOP at

http://vegetablefruitcarving.com/vfcmembers/shop.

Check it out.

Just a quick not to let you know that I have just added a couple of new products to my shopping page. 

One of the 5 variations of root vegetable flowers demonstrated in the Yam and Turnip Flower Video

 Lots of people have asked for video instructions on how to make the “carrot” flowers that I show in the video demonstrating the Corrugated U-Cutters. (Although those flowers look like “carrots”, they are actually yams.)

So, now I have the lessons available on DVD. It’s called Yam and Turnip Flowers – made with corrugated U-cutters.

From the very first time that I made these and brought them to a Thanksgiving dinner, I’ve always gotten ooohs and aaahs when I make these. They look impressively intricate but they are actually  easy to make once you know how. For variety, the same design variations can be made with other root vegetables including beets, daikon, really fat carrots and sweet potatoes.

I’ve also just add a set of great quality, sharp and sturdy fruit carving knives by Kom Kom. You can check it all out in my shop.

The Holland Sentinel published a nice article about THE CARVE and you can see it at http://www.hollandsentinel.com/features/x2138387608/Food-carvers-chisel-their-way-to-victory

The first ever U.S. Collegiate National Championships were held at THE CARVE event at the Holland Farmer’s Market in Holland Michigan. It was all about fruit and vegetable carving. What fun it was. There was creativity flowing everywhere. In this article, you’ll see the winners and you’ll find lots of photos that may give you some ideas of your own. continue reading…

You might want to attend a really fun vegetable carving event coming up in a couple of weeks called THE CARVE III.

Holland Farmers Market’s third annual vegetable carving event will host the first ever U.S. Collegiate National Championship Carving Competition where teams from culinary schools across the nation will compete. I’ll be serving as one of the judges along with the winner of Food Network’s Fantasy Fruit Sculptures Competition, Doug St Souver. Cash prizes will be awarded to the top 4 winning teams.

Everyone can get in on the fun because there will be Peoples Choice division where professionals, amateurs, and students can complete and the public will decide the winners. High schoolers can compete in there own division. In these two divisions there will be cash prizes awarded to the top 3 winners.

On Saturday, kids can join in the fun by assembling their own fruit and vegetable sculptures.

This is bound to be a blast for anyone who likes to play with food as well as for the public that attends. Come if you can. If you know anyone else who likes the idea of playing with food, pass this on to them.

It’s not too late to compete. You’ll find all the details and the competition registration form at http://www.hollandfarmersmarket.com/thecarve/.

THE CARVE III takes place at the October 1 and 2, 2010 at the Farmers Market in Holland Michigan and is proudly sponsored by Alpenrose Restaurant.

P.S. As a lover of food art, you might find these two websites of the organizer of THE CARVE, Greg Butauski, really interesting. They show ice sculptures, sand sculpture, food art and more.

http://www.rockonice.com

http://www.arttheexperience.com

Although my main goal with my website is to offer fruit carving information and instructions, I have had many customers asking for fruit carving knives.  I just added some to my shopping page and you can learn more at http://vegetablefruitcarving.com/vfcmembers/shop/

It’s a high quality set of very sharp knifes imported from Thailand. I’ve chosen them because they are very versatile and they are strong enough for carving  root vegetables like carrots and yams as well as hard squashes. If you are wanting a set of good versatile fruit carving knives, click here for more details.

Much of my carving training has been in the Thai fruit carving style. Thai fruit carving often includes lots of detailed and intricate melon carving. The results are colorful and enchanting to the eyes. 

A couple of weeks ago our group brought carvings to celebrate what we have learned. I thought that you might enjoy seeing these photos. They may provide inspiration for you to learn fruit carving. If you are already an experienced carver, maybe you will get some new ideas for patterns to carve.

Take a look at these lovely Thai fruit carvings.

Rather than try to view these with the Pic Lens or Slide show links, it will most likely work best if you click the photo that you want to see. Then you can click the ‘Next’ and ‘Back’ links to view photos before it and after it. Enjoy!

[Show as slideshow]

[View with PicLens]

12►

If you enjoy carving melons, you will love the Thai Pro Flexible Blade knife. You can learn more about it here.

If you want to learn to carve melons in the Thai style, check out my video lessons Carving Watermelons – Roses, Buds and Leaves. A great next step after that is the video lessons in Carving Melon Flowers – Smooth and Jagged Petals. Because you can get online access right away, you can start learning Thai fruit carving today.

It is not common knowledge but today is National Watermelon Day in the United States. Refreshing, delicious. sweet watermelon. Yum. Why not have celebrate national watermelon day while watermelons are at the peak of their season? They are plentiful and inexpensive right now. I just bought a huge one today for only $1.99!

The following are some great ideas in honor of National Watermelon Day.

Watermelon Lanterns

If you are planning a luau or summer party that will go into the evening hours, you can create dramatic, glowing watermelon lanterns much like a Halloween Jack-O-Lantern – but prettier!  Your carved watermelon can be beautiful by day and night. Here are photos showing a carved watermelon that I made before and after turning it into a lantern. You can light your watermelon with a flashlight, or other battery powered light. You might try lighting with battery powered candle type lights. You can even light with a real candle as long as you open up the top or create holes to allow enough oxygen so that the flame will burn.

Besides carving, there are so many other things you can do with watermelon. Here are a few delicious, fun, unusual and downright silly watermelon ideas you may want to try.

continue reading…

Yesterday I participated in a little friendly fruit carving competition and won 2nd prize. I thought you might like to see my arrangement. I hope it gives you some ideas for your own arrangements.

When you click on the small photos below, you will be able to see a larger photos as well as a description of the carved items.

[Show as slideshow]

[View with PicLens]

The following is a question that I got from a student after he viewed my post showing photos of  Thai carvings at the Songkran festival. You can view those photos here: http://vegetablefruitcarving.com/blog/thai-fruit-carvings/

Perhaps you have this same questions, so here it is followed by my answer:

The question:

“Hi and Good Afternoon:  I really liked the shade of purple used to dye the diakon.  Other than the standard blue,yellow,red and green food coloring found in grocery stores I have not been able to locate food coloring that gives a pastel shade to carvings.  I suppose I could mix red and blue and try to come up with an acceptable shade of purple but was wondering if oriental/asian stores handle a different food coloring than those commonly available? continue reading…

If you want to make carvings that don’t get eaten….or that won’t eventually spoil, you can make soap carvings. Using the same techniques and carving knives that are used to carve fruits, you can make beautiful carvings in soap. They make for pretty gifts.

Here is a design I carved into a honeydew melon. continue reading…

This past Sunday I participated in a Songkran Festival which celebrates the Thai Traditional New Year and is also known as the Water Festival. A group of us carved fruits and vegetables to make a lovely display table and I thought that you might enjoy these photos. They may give you some inspiration and ideas for carvings of your own.

continue reading…

Get Instant Access
Free Vegetable Fruit Carving Video Lesson!

Have successful results right away.

Hi,

I’m  Nita Gill and I’d like to send you one of my vegetable and fruit carving lesson right now, for free. No purchase necessary. No strings attached. I think you’ll love it.

You may be surprised at how simple it can be to make a carved vegetable centerpiece that you will be proud of and will make your guests smile.

If you are an experienced carver, you will enjoy this as a new idea to implement. It is simple and beautiful and quite inexpensive to make.

Once you experience the fun and satisfaction of creating beautiful carved fruits and vegetables, I think you will want to learn more. And if you want to learn more, I have more video lessons from which you can learn.

So, to get your free video now, just sign in below and I’ll see you on the next page.

Do you have a lemon, tangerine or orange tree with plentiful fruit? Here’s something fun you can do with them to make your next meal presentation prettier.

I was recently given a whole bunch of fresh lemons and tangerines which prompted me to make this quick video showing you an easy way to make roses with citrus peels.

It’s a quick video. Only 2 and 1/4 minutes. Hope you enjoy it.

continue reading…