Meat and Cheese Bouquet
You may have noticed that sometimes I get behind on posting. As an example, I started this post 2.5 years ago – shortly after our 4th wedding anniversary. I suddenly decided that now would be the perfect time to finish it because Valentine’s Day is coming up, and I have an idea for you that’s so much better than chocolates or flowers. Wait…maybe not chocolates, but it’s more creative and way less sugar and carbs. Make your man or woman a meat and cheese bouquet. That’s right, and meat and cheese edible arrangement.
Let me take you back to 2014…or at least, what I wrote in 2014.
Our anniversary was on Sunday. It was our 4th, but most of the week I said it was our 3rd because I’m not good at dates. Before our first anniversary, we I decided that we should base our anniversary gifts off of the traditional “yearly” gifts. The traditional gifts are kinda sucky for the 4th anniversary…appliances, fruit, linen…. I struggled with what to do for him and thought that an Edible Arrangement would be perfect, except he doesn’t eat fruit. I thought about making him a meat and cheese edible arrangement and googled to see if there was such a thing. Turns out, after some searching, I found that people have made them before. But I looked for other things for him because it doesn’t really fall within the “fruit” category. I decided to make him some artwork printed on linen once I found it could be done pretty simply. I forgot to take a picture, but the project turned out pretty cool. ANYWAY….surprisingly Lo sent an edible arrangement to me at work on Friday. It was awesome because I do love fruit…especially chocolate-covered fruit.
So once he sent that to me, I knew I had to also make him a meat and cheese one because it would be funny. I ran to the store on my lunch hour to get the supplies. I wandered through the deli and refrigerated meat section and just bought whatever I could use to make a bouquet. I assembled the “flowers” when Lo and Jenson were napping on Saturday and “hid” them in a container in the fridge for Sunday. I didn’t actually have to hide them, because Lo doesn’t really look in the fridge very thoroughly, so it was as simple as sticking the container in the back of the fridge on a lower shelf. Lo’s mom had come up that weekend so we could go out to dinner for our anniversary and to help with Jenson the next day while we finished painting our laminate countertops with granite-looking paint (yep, that’s another post that hasn’t been completed yet).
We were soooo young looking. Wow…hard to believe that was just a little over 2 years ago.
On Sunday, when Lo took Jenson up to lay him down for his nap, I assembled the bouquet. He loved it! I mean, I never doubted that he would…it’s meat and cheese. But seriously – how pumped would your love be to receive this?
What I used for the meat and cheese bouquet:
Base: A round loaf of garlic dinner rolls that I nabbed off of the day-old rack
Stems: I used the plastic skewers that were from the edible arrangement that he got me, but wooden skewers would work great. Green onions slid right over the skewers, and I just tore little strips of the onions downward to make leaves and to leave room to add the “flower”.
Flowers: Small round roll of cheddar sliced with my crinkle cutter, pepperoni slices, string cheese, dried beef sticks, mini peppers, and babayel cheese (from which I peeled off the red wax coating in sections for variety). I initially had other ingredients in the grocery card, but I’d left my credit card in my office and had to use the $20 in cash that I’d stashed in my car. There are so many options…stuff from the olive bar, other dried meats, more veggies for color, rolled up sandwich pepperoni, salami.
And since we’ve traveled back in time with this post, look at Jenson! He was nearly 1 year old and oh my gosh – I miss that little baby face. SO freaking cute. I mean, he’s still so freaking cute, but those chubby cheeks!
I don’t often see much resemblance between Jenson and Marlowe, though people have told me they look similar, but when I saw this picture of Jenson, I immediately could see it.
