more sugar than sweet...

So it's a friends anniversary... and the guy in the relationship wanted to buy an edible arrangement, those fruit basket bouquet things. He called me and asked if I could help him pick one out for his wife of 11 years.

Now, don't get me wrong they're a great idea, but pretty darn expensive. I figured our local grocery store might offer something similar but at a better price. Ol' Steve the  manager explained that he had indeed looked and experimented with the idea of offering a similar product. It turns out, he understood why a small Edible Arrangement costs $60 because fruit isn't cheap, but more importantly, labor was intense. I thanked him for his honesty, looked at my mom and said, we can totally make one of those ourselves.

We rummaged through the fruit section, and since she had recently been a recipient of one of these Edible Arrangments, and a bit of a packrat, she had cleaned and saved all the sticks and the basket! Problem was I saw a picture of a watermelon carved into the shape of a basket and wanted to really outdo ourselves (fully intending to stick the one stick that said Edible Arrangements in the top and see if we could fool my friends wife).

Well, we're both pretty darn stubborn and our "visions" for our fruit bouquet were not the same. She actually wanted to make it look like a real Edible Arrangment and I wanted to sort of mix what I'd seen them do, with some other ideas I'd seen some crafty magazine like Real Simple (talk about resourceful...but we know the dilemma with magazines... or do we?)

Anyway, I cut the watermelon into the basket, and attempted to make watermelon balls - damn near impossible. Then I thought maybe squares, not easy either, so I ended up slicing them into really small wedges. Not sure you get that much fruit out of it but it's the only way they looked nice. Mom tried slicing the pineapple thin, since you don't get much pineapple to begin with, it all fell apart. Next thing you know the two of us are consuming more fruit, using more marshmallows, because they don't fall apart, and we have made ourselves a mess.

Steve was on to something...

Mom used those little styrofoam squares to help root her sticks, I had nothing. I thought about making a cake to put in the bottom but i figured the fruit would be too heavy. Rice Krispie treats would have worked (we had all the marshmallows) but no Rice Krispies. Finally we made popcorn balls, wrapped them in Saran wrap and prayed. Talk about a disaster...

You be the judge. Mine is the watermelon basket looking thing, hers is the one with all the Kale sticking out of the white basket... Just remember although hers may look better... Mine have popcorn balls and more marshmallows!!! :)

I also carved mine...

I'm only pushing the attributes of my fruit because we actually sent out a text to some friends and she won! 4-1


I will quote Daniel Tosh once again. Edible fruit Arrangements are not easy to make, they are not cheap to make, and they sure as heck don't look like the ones the Edible Arrangement people make... and so for that Edible Arrangements, I salute you.

P.S. did you know they make chocolate mint marshmallows??? I didn't either. They weren't exactly fitting for this, but we got them anyway and tried them. The bag says you can melt them on top of brownies! definitely doing that sometime.

Have I mentioned how glad I am that food is not considered new?? ha it's my only release!