Looking for Pretty Food Ideas for Valentines Day? Some of these are beautiful, one is wacky, one is not so successful. My heart just melted. But I’ll show you how yours will be successful.

For starters, how about bacon roses? That’s right. You will find fruits and vegetables carvings in the shape of roses all over my website. But, I’ll bet you’ve probably never seen roses made from bacon! I wish I could give credit to someone for this original idea but I got this photo from a fellow fruit carver, Carl Jones, who got it from a friend who got it from who knows where. It’s so fun, I had to share it. Take a look. continue reading…

Radish flowers bouquet taught in Nita’s free video lesson

Making carved radish flowers is a great way to “get your feet wet” with vegetable and fruit carving. Radishes are easy to work with and are usually accessible in your grocery store all year round. Their bright red skin and white interior makes for a beautiful color contrast that is perfect for making vegetable flowers.

My free radish bouquet is easy enough for beginners and pretty enough for professional fruit carving displays. In this article you will see examples of radish bouquets make by students and pros.

Readers of my blog who have signed up for my free lesson always have great photos to share from their first attempts at carving radish flowers. I recently featured some of these photos in a previous post: Radish Flowers Carved by Students of Free Lesson. I also wrote a blog post about how students made their own variations on the radish flowers idea: Delicious Fruit Arrangements.

Since writing those posts, I’ve received more photos and comments from readers who have tried making radish flowers. I’d like to share them with you as it might give you ideas for making your own edible bouquets. continue reading…

Today, I’d like to show you a few vegetable bouquets of carved radish flowers that people have made after watching my free radish bouquet video lesson.

People who visit my blog are usually impressed by the carvings of fruit flowers or vegetable roses they see and want to know how to make their own edible bouquets. That’s why I’ve created my online video lessons; however, if you’re like me, you probably want to try something first to decide if it’s for you. So I suggest that readers start with my free lesson on how to make an easy bouquet of radish flowers.

The response is always positive because continue reading…

One of my student /customers Sharron Nickerson recently created a wedding fruit display for a wedding that she hosted at her home. It was her first large fruit carving display.

Here is what Sharon wrote to me when she sent her photo to me.

Hi Nita,

My fruit and veggie appetizers display turned out awesome. No one could believe it was my first one. I have done smaller fruit bouquets but nothing on this scale. I found some other Ideas from off the Internet but the watermelon and Radish bouquets were the favorite. It was a big hit at the wedding in my back yard. I did get the tools on Friday.

Thanks Sharron”

I agree with Sharron, it did turn out awesome. Take a look at her photos. continue reading…

Remember the old saying, “Necessity is the mother of invention”? I think it applies to fruit and vegetable carving.

There will be plenty of times that you are in the middle of preparing a carving and realize that you don’t have all the ingredients that you need. Or, you may want to create a carving and find that you either don’t have the ingredients or that the fruits that you want are not available.

Well there is no end to the ways you can improvise.

Here is one way that of my customers has successfully improvised.

Radish Bouquet as taught in my video lesson.

Jeanne Kelly set out to make the radish bouquet that I show how to make in one of my free video lessons. The flowers were to be made of radishes with the centers being cut from yellow squash. She did not have the corrugated U-cutters with which to cut the flowers so she use an aspic cutter, which is like a cookie cutter or fondant cutter, to make the flowers. Then, she did no have the mini-melon baller with which to cut the centers to she got really creative and used a hole punch. You know, the type with which you punch holes in paper!

Then, it turned out that she didn’t have enough radishes and had more than enough squash.

Jeanne's Squash and Radish Bouquet

So, she did the reverse and made the flowers from squash and the centers from the radish. And she got an entirely different, and very nice, results.

I thought that she came up with some very creative solutions.

So feel free to improvise. You may even like your improvised carvings and arrangements better.

If you would like the free lesson in which I show exactly how to create my radish bouquet, just sign in below and I’ll send the video to you.