gor[b] Paul Gorbould: Words and Pictures

Company fruits and vegetables

I've turned into a company man, it seems. So much so that last week a crabby right-winger actually called me a corporate "lapblogger" (which I thought was rather funny.)

He must be right, though. Twice in the past week, I've found myself carving the CBC logo into foodstuffs. It's sort of like that crazy mashed potato scene in Close Encounters - I can't help myself.

On Saturday I had some friends over to celebrate my birthday. We prepared a bunch of appetizers, including one I learned from a neighbour (I believe it was Pary and Carol) - slices of granny smith apple with olive paste. A delicious mix of savoury and tart (to make it more tart and longer-lasting, try a little lemon juice on the apple slices first.)

Fine, except that when I cut up the apple - and I kid you not! - it turned out to have exactly this form:

OK, so I made two extra cuts to make the four smallest bits out of two slices, but this was exactly one apple.

I tried to replicate it on a second apple, and screwed it up - it took 1.5 apples to make a second plate for the coffee table.

Here's what it looks like with the olive paste - looks a little dirty by comparison, but extra tasty.

 

And then there was Halloween. Taking a cue from a CBC pumpkins indepth a colleague was working on (I helped convert the fabulous Kevin Sylvester-designed jack-o-lantern patterns to .pdfs) I posted a CBC pumpkin carving contest on the Inside The CBC blog.

Nobody entered at first, so Ava and I carved our own CBC jack-o-lantern, seen below.

Not bad, for a bit of kitchen-knife hackery (we have those clever carving tools around somewhere, but I couldn't be bothered to look for them. Besides, I like the old school method. Stabbing a pumpkin with a knife is alarmingly satisfying, no?)

OK, but the real payoff is when the sucker was lit up! I must say it was a real hit sitting on our front porch. I was particularly pleased that even the young kids recognized the logo - that warmed my cynical heart like a tea light in a hollowed vegetable!

Check out the pumpkin carving contest winners - they're even better.