Watermelon Carving Contest - Vote For Me

My "Hello Kitty" watermelon carving is one of the finalists in the Watermelon.org carving contest! In a couple days they will be revealing 1st, 2nd & 3rd place in each category but now they are taking votes on the fan favorite with a grand prize of $500! I would appreciate it if you took a moment of your time and voted for my "Hello Kitty" carving here: http://www.whataboutwatermelon.com/index.php/watermelon-carving-contest/

 Thanks everyone!

Fruit Carving - Hello Kitty Watermelon Carving

Did this Hello Kitty watermelon carving over the weekend for my niece's 6th birthday party:

Learn To Carve Fruit Videos

If you want to learn to carve fruit, check out my YouTube videos for some easy beginner projects:

Learn To Carve Fruit Videos

The pictures below are a couple examples of the fruit carving video lessons you will find there.

Fruit Carving Video Lesson - Apple Leaf Plate Garnish

Just posted a video on Youtube on how to make these apple leaf plate garnishes, watch the Fruit Carving Apple Leaf Lesson. While you are there, don't forget to subscribe to my channel!

Mothers Day Fruit Carving

I hope everyone had a Happy Mothers Day!

Frozen Fruit Dessert Maker - Fruit Sorbet

I want one!!

You add frozen fruit into the machine and out comes a fruit sorbet that looks like soft serve ice cream. I think this is neat because I always have leftover fruit and this would be a new way to eat it!

Custom Fruit Carving and Edible Vegetable Arrangement

Custom vegetable platter with watermelon carvings and fruit "swimming pool"

Fruit and Vegetable Carving For Valentine's Day

Here are two video tutorials I did last year for Valentine's Day:

Chocolate Covered Strawberry Roses
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7J0TnOFyboU

Vegetable Garnishes For A Romantic Salad
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TT2LOjx5wgo

I hope they give you romantic dinner ideas!

Christmas Tree Vegetable Arrangement

This is a edible vegetable arrangement with a Christmas Tree centerpiece that I made for a clients Christmas party last year. Since the original post was after Christmas, I am re-posting this to share the idea with you at a more appropriate time! Please let me know what you think of the idea by commenting below and if anyone uses the idea, I would love to hear from you!

I cut the stem of the broccoli pieces at an angle.

I bought a craft store foam cone and left it in it's wrapper with a added layer of plastic wrap. The broccoli was secured in by toothpicks on the bottom row and then I just slide the next couple of rows in behind the last row, holding them in place.



For the garland I used carrot curls that I cut to size.

I secured the carrot garland with toothpicks, I left the ends of the toothpicks exposed and used the exposed ends to add my cherry tomatoes to the broccoli tree.

Simple cucumber flower with radish center.

I love using mini bell peppers as flowers, very colorful and simple. Just quarter the pepper down to the stem base taking care not to cut through and cut the membrane out that keeps the peppers shape.

Keep all your veggie flowers in ice cold water so they will start to open and curl like flowers.

Use green onion (just the dark green straw part) to make the wood skewer look more like flower stems.

Add a head of ice burg lettuce to the bottom of a bowl, planter or basket and push your vegetable flower skewers into the lettuce to hold them in place. I also used skewers to secure the broccoli Christmas tree into place into the head of lettuce.

I hope you liked this idea! Let me know what you think in the comment section!

Any questions? Please leave questions under comment section and I will answer them!

Vegetable Carving - Easy Vegetable Flowers Take Basic Veggie Platter To Next Level

Here is a new video I just put together, it requires only a paring knife and a couple minutes to turn a basic veggie and dip appetizer platter into an awesome looking display!

Please tell me what you think by rating the video and commenting .... If you really like it please don't forget to subscribe to my YouTube channel!

Last Attempt At Pumpkin Carvings, For Now

After my last post, I was so disappointed with the way my 3D pumpkin face and Jack O Lantern turned out that I scoured the internet looking for basic tips on carving faces into pumpkins. I did, after all, still have a cute little mini pumpkin that was a table decoration! What kind of self respecting carver would just let it go? I don't know the answer to that question but I do know that I could not!

I found a video of Ray Villafane on Martha Stewart's show ... well actually 3 videos, it is his whole segment cut into 3 pieces ... but he shows lots of great tips to getting the pumpkin face started and adding eyes! Now, he doesn't give too much away in the videos, after all he is there to promote his DVD for sale, but it was enough to help me make this tiny 3D pumpkin face which is way better then the one I made last week (see post below)!

Here is the video link: http://www.marthastewart.com/861070/creative-pumpkin-carving

I am also re-posting my Jack O Lantern picture after I did a little surgery to make the lighting stand out better!





Yayyy, let's carve something!!!

My 3D Pumpkin Carving Experiments

Sorry I did not post my fall fruit carving pictures sooner, I just was overall not happy with my pumpkin carvings especially the 3D aspect I tried to jump into :-(

This was my most recent attempt at a 3D pumpkin carving, a spooky tree and mini jack o lantern. I payed a little more attention to the weight vs size of the pumpkin as to pick a dense feeling gourd to ensure thicker walls to work with.
It looked really good with the light in it but the photo does not do it justice.

This is something silly I did on the back of my first pumpkin after I realized the walls were to thin to do do what I originally wanted to do.




So I wanted to carve a 3D face in my pumpkin but I did not do a good job picking it out and the walls were too thin to really get enough depth.

Looking evil

The positive news is I found this great de-seeder / scraper meant for pumpkins but I think will work for honeydews and cantaloupe too! It worked so fast and easy, it really took the hassle of taking the seeds and stringy mush out!



The other great result of me carving is pumpkins seeds, I love making roasted pumpkin seeds(and I hate wasting any part of food that you can use)! This is a batch I roasted with olive oil and salt but I also make a sweet version with sugar and pumpkin pie spices.

Next year I want to get one of the speckled or striped pumpkins like the one in the lower left corner ;-)

Happy Halloween everyone!

The Great Pumpkin Search Has Ended - Pumpkin Carving To Follow!

After calling around for 2 hours trying to find a pumpkin at a local farmers market with no luck and then asking everyone I know that lives near me if they have seen a pumpkin patch .... nothing! I was completely bummed, I want to carve a pumpkin!!

The very next day, I drove past the very first farmer market that I had called and they had tons of them ... yippie!

I am hoping to carve at least one a week until Halloween, check back for pics!

I want to get one of these big boys!

Pumpkin Carving Inspiration

3 months … that is how long it has been since I posted anything on this Fruit Carving and Vegetable Carving blog (or any of my other blogs either!)! During the peak of the summer season when perfectly ripe watermelon, cantaloupes and honeydews beg to be shaped into something new and awesome … well, I was recovering from having my torn shoulder muscles sewn back together, which coupled with the post surgery therapy was a very painful couple of months!!

But enough of the negative in the past, looking forward to the fall season including the cooler weather as well as PUMPKINS TO CARVE!! I watched two shows on Food Network Sunday night that really got me itching to carve a pumpkin. First, they showed a repeat from 2010 of a “Pumpkin Challenge” that was pretty cool and I don’t remember seeing last year. Than the have a new series called “Halloween Wars” which is a four week elimination competition that has 5 teams of three people; one pumpkin carver, one sugar/candy maker and one baker. The teams have to add all three elements on to one show piece for each challenge and at the end of each episode one team is eliminated. I was pretty sure I was going like it but I really loved it! The professional carvers on the show are awesome and I love seeing their fast action techniques and what tools they use. In fact, I was surprised to see that all of the carvers used completely different tools than one another …. expensive Thai style carving knifes, run of the mill paring knifes, exacto knifes, chef knifes, etc. Of course I also enjoyed the candy and cake aspect of the challenge too but I was just excited to see great fruit carving on Food Network!!

Anyways, I have tons of ideas now all I need to do is find someone selling pumpkins this early!!

Happy Carving!

Create n Carve Event Roundup

Thanks to everyone who sent in their fruit carving pictures and vegetable carving photos in participation with this event! If anyone is interested, the July event is being hosted here: http://simplysara07.blogspot.com/2011/07/create-n-carve-fruit-and-vegetable.html

These first 4 photos are fruit, veggie and candy arrangements for a graduation party

by Qamar Khan

Watermelon Basket by Soujanya

Rose Flower with Cucumber by Soujanya

Honeydew Bunny by Soujanya

Stork by Vardhini Balasubramanian

Cantaloupe Seahorse by Rita Loccisano

Watermelon Rose by Nayna

Triple Rose by Nayna

Double Rose by Nayna

Carrot and Apple Roses by Nayna

Melon Tower by Carved Memories

Beach Scene by Melissa Eschbaugh

Watermelon Flower by Katq Sabeva

Watermelon Carving by Harika

Hello Kitty Watermelon by Selena