Who Says You Shouldn't Play with Your Food?
If you're one of those people who just can't figure out what to do with a head of cauliflower, do we have some websites for you!
The answer, according to Carl Warner, a British photographer, has nothing to do with steaming or oven roasting. It has everything to do with pixellating.
In “Foodscapes,” Warner used everyday pieces of food to create surreal three-dimensional photographs that are part farmers market, part Alice In Wonderland. A broccoli forest. A tropical beach with smoked salmon waves, pumpernickel rocks and a peapod boat. A Tuscan village with a cheese farmhouse and stone walls built of seeds. Amazingly, every element in Warner's shots is an edible remnant from his kitchen. To view his portfolio, go to his Foods website, click on Stills and then on the green Foodscape box. Warning: it's a slow-loading site. To learn more about how he did it, check out these pieces from the BBC and TheThinkingBlog.com.
Another cool thing to do with food — assuming for some odd reason you are not going to eat it — is to make "floral arrangements." And few people have done this better than James Parker, who has carved a career out of carving fruits and vegetables.
His company, Veggy Art, started as an outgrowth of his own work as a chef, when he was looking for centerpieces to help garnish his meals. Parker soon found that his carved melons, squash and radishes drew more "oohs" and "aahs" than his entrees, and a new business was born. (You may have seen him on one of many competitions on the Food Network. There are some great videos from Sugar Rush and the Food Network Challenge).
If you are interested in this clever and creative use of food, you can actually contact Parker to take one of his classes, or you can just check out some of his astonishingly inventive work, on his website.
