Decorating Your Food

My first memory of food as a plaything was pressing the tines of a fork down the sides of a cucumber and then slicing the cucumber into rounds.  I was probably about six years old when my mother showed me how to do this, and I was enchanted.  Maybe that was both the beginning and the end of my trying to impress people with the food I prepared.

Yes, the cucumber slices looked cool, and so did the subsequent radishes that I carved into roses and then soaked in cold water for a while so they would open.  The bigger lesson was that despite the way these vegetables now looked, they tasted exactly the same as the plain ones.

Would I grow up to be a people pleaser?  Probably.  But...
when it comes to food preparation, my interest is making sure the food tastes good, not how it looks.  Of course, it has to be presentable, not embarrassing.  Most of all, though, my hope is that people will ask for seconds.

I was reminded of my early food decorating days recently when I bought a serrated table knife at a garage sale.  After cutting some slices of cheddar with it, I discovered the slices had little ridges across them.  Very decorative indeed, but I have yet to figure out a way to utilize this new trick.

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