Food Art

Art is omni-present.

Sometime back, on the occasion of Ganesha Chaturthi (an Indian festival) I got the opportunity to exhibit art through the medium of food. I am sharing it today. Its one of those simple DIYs.

Food is an integral part of our lives. Its our eyes that feasts on food foremost. Use these ideas and make your food a visual treat for family and guests. Use todays DIY and create your own food art.

I used tomato, onion, carrots, lemon, green chilly, beetroot, radish , cucumber, whole black pepper, cherries, mint sprigs, orange, some tooth picks. A lot of other fruits and vegetables can be used too. A simple tomato peel flower alone can be a head turner.

Wash and dry all your vegetables and fruits well. Start by planning as per the size of the presenting dish. Keeping your design in mind, roughly estimate how many flowers and leaves would be needed. Keep your flowers, leaves and other decorative bits ready before you begin to assemble.

  

This DIY has a centre piece, so I began from there. Ganesha's ears, snout and legs were carved out of a carrot and pinned onto a tomato with tooth picks (don't get fixed with getting the perfect shapes, just have some fun). Lemon wedges made the crown, whole black pepper made the eyes and two twisted chillies, the tusks.

  

Next up were my flowers. To have some variety I made flowers with tomato peels, cucumber and onions. I am attaching some links to videos from where I took guidance for these flowers. They are really easy and quick to make, so don't get all worked up ;) 

 

Flowers and leaves go together. Leaves were done with cucumber, radish and carrots. All of them were cut diagonally into thin slices, then carved on the edges and in the middle for the veins.

To add a bit of color and detailing, I shredded some beetroot and inserted a sprig of mint leaves in the cherry top. Once you pull out the cherry stem you can insert the mint sprig easily, go a bit gentle with these leaves.

The last bit was assembling. I wanted some height for the Ganesha piece so I used a whole orange right in the centre of the dish. The shredded turnip strips helped to cover the orange and I installed the Ganesha figure on top of that. Towards the edge of the circular dish the leaves were placed in alternating colors. An offering of flowers for the lord is just the right thing. And surely he was surrounded by a wide variety of flowers. The tomato roses and onion flowers were placed between the Ganesha figure and the leaves also hiding any blank spaces between the two layers. The cucumber tulips were pinned to the side of the figure with cherry in the centre.

Try it and give it your creative flair and let me know :)