Edible Decor

Ever since I started buying a Bountiful Basket, drinking Green Smoothies, and just buying more produce in general, one thing that I've enjoyed beyond the obvious benefits of such a life style is the fact that; because my kitchen  theme has always been fruit, with fun, graphic decor in bright colors. This makes is not only logical but very enjoyable and ascetically pleasing to have fresh fruit in the kitchen because I can use it as decor. Plus, having the fruit out in plain site makes it easier to remember to eat it before it goes bad. That is, if you can bring yourself to ruin the lovely display. Lol!
Of course my husband has no problem with the latter issue so it turns out to be a good system for eating our fresh fruit regularly. 

I have a fruit bowl, but often it fills up so quickly that it becomes necessary to use other places for displaying fruit. 

My favorite is the ledge under the window in the kitchen. Here are just a few of the arrangements that have resided there until they were eaten.

Pears . . .

 Golden Delicious Apples

Asian Pears and Apples

Maybe this will inspire some of you to find fun ways to display fruit in your own kitchen, and thereby encourage your family to eat it more often.

What I Ate: 05-05-12

Sadly I have nothing amazing to show for cinco de mayo this past Spring, in fact I probably forgot about it since my daughter's birthday is the day before.

As such I had made my funny little five year old a special (and as healthy as possible) birthday cake for her fifth year celebration. I used a recipe called Hummingbird cake I found on Pinterest, which I decorated with dried pineapple flowers and edible pansies (and a plastic Tinkerbell of course.) I'll try to post some pictures up here soon so I can link to it.

Anyway, in the recipe online the blogger wrote about how the frosting turned out sparse so of course I doubled the recipe and the result was that I had about a cup of frosting leftover even after generously frosting the cake. So the next day I was looking at that extra frosting, trying to decide how best to use it and I recalled a blog I had read not to long before that in which an adorable expectant mother was always craving apple slices dipped in cream cheese frosting. I had apples on hand so I figured I might as well try it. 

It was pretty good, though my frosting was a little thick to make dipping very possible. I still think that caramel or peanut butter are a bit better. Of course the girl from the blog might have been using store bought frosting which would have tasted differently and was probably much softer. 

(No I did not eat all of that frosting in one day, or with apples--though I think I tried it one more time--it lasted weeks and I had to find other creative uses for it.)

I think I should note, when I made the hummingbird cake it was really good, but I had (or chose, in some cases) to make some substitutions. For example, I replaced the sugar with raw honey instead. I didn't have any pecans (sadly) so I put flake coconut in the frosting and I substituted part of the flour for oatmeal instead. My father-in-law who makes amazing cakes said he really liked the oatmeal in it, although he didn't know what it was at first.