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Where there is no law, but every man does what is right in his own eyes, there is the least of real liberty
Henry M. Robert

The Vegetable Tango is a Long-Lasting Dance

13 November, 2012 - 00:00

Who does not like to relish the wonderful gifts nature gives us in the summer? They can appease physical as well as the emotional hunger so familiar to the dwellers of hot and stuffy apartments in gray concrete housing projects. How to “prepare” a bouquet of vegetables, the Vegetable Tango, is the theme of our lesson today.

Take in equal proportions greens, spices, pickles, pepper, ketchup, vinegar, salt, and a bit of imagination and patience.

Start by building the basis for the bouquet. For this you need grape vines without leaves. Shape them like a bird’s nest. To make the composition stronger, fix a few cross-like sticks from firm strait twigs to the bottom of the nest with wire. You’ll use the stick in the middle of the nest as a handle, to which the other sticks are connected with wire.

As you finish building the basis for the composition, you begin to fill the nest with vegetables. Break cauliflower into several parts and fasten each part with a length of wire to a stick. Sweet peas, eggplant, and small young carrots can be arranged in the same way. If you have a small cabbage, you can set a whole head on a separate stick. Now you can garnish your bouquet tiny propellers of maple.

While arranging vegetables in the nest, you’ll need help. As your left hand holding the nest gets tired, you can give it to your assistant to hold until your hand has rested. You can even step back for two-three meters and, squinting your left eye, take a side view of your bouquet to evaluate it. And then refreshed you can get down to work again.

If you want your bouquet to look more exquisite, add a few stems of asparagus and wildflowers. And, finally, the last touch. Decorate your vegetable composition with a long bright ribbon, making a long loop-like handle of it. Now your bouquet is ready. And I assure you that even Arcimboldo himself could have been fascinated with your creation.

Now to complete our lesson, let me give you a piece of advice. If you get such a bouquet as a gift, don’t hurry to eat it, because its author’s feelings will be deeply hurt. (I know.) And that is quite understandable. After spending a solid hour to make a bouquet, he cannot calmly watch how his masterpiece disappears right before his eyes. So, remember the Vegetable Tango is a long-lasting dance.

Photo by the author:

A vegetable bouquet is stylish and original

 

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