Food Ideas for Valentine’s Day

I love creativity, especially when it comes to

food design ideas during the holidays!

The following are some creative ideas I found on the internet and Pinterest, for Valentine’s Day.

They inspired me so I’m sharing them with you… 

Enjoy the Creativity!

EILEEN

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Red ice cubes in a white drink, or…

valentine-drink2

white ice cubes in a red drink?
Either way, it’s heartfelt! LOL

add a marble for heart shaped valentine cupcakes

Add marble before filling to create heart-shaped cupcakes

val cocoa

Cocoa with Marshmallow Heart –
cut from the large Kraft
s’mores marshmallows

courtesy of Bakarella

cookies

Cut slit in cookie prior to baking

cinnamon-hearts

Cinnamon Hearts made from slices of refrigated cinnamon rolls

courtesy of Land o Lakes

courtesy of Land o Lakes

heart eggs

My kind of breakfast!

pizza in heart shape

pizza hearts

Valentine's Day Recipe - Salad with tomato hearts

Valentine's Day Recipe - making heart tomatoes

Directions for making heart-shaped tomato

vday-cookies-sm425x270

FUDGIES_COMPLETE_CLOSE

These are mine!
Look for the simple, easy directions
under my RECIPE tab.

val fruit

val day fruit

plate

2 quick ideas for your Super Bowl party

    

In case you haven’t noticed, it’s that time of year again!

Time for creative commercials, face-painted fans and superstar half-time entertainment… and oh yeah, a championship game – SUPER BOWL XVLI!  And if you’re planning a get together for the big game, I have a couple of ideas to make the party more interesting….

CREATIVE FOOD

Why not “streeeeeetch” out the your burger patties (when making them) to create a football shape.  Also, cut long & short, thin slices of (thick-cut) pepper jack cheese and have them ready to pop on top of your burger near the end of the grilling process.  The upside – it will save a few calories (using less cheese), create the look of a football and a highly-flavored cheese has more punch, so less will be more, in this case.  Consider some raw almonds as one of the side dishes… they’re football shaped and healthy!  Also, instead of lettuce to top off the burger, offer your guests leaf spinach.  It will be healthier and also put the grid-IRON on your burger ( get it? lol).

ADD YOUR OWN COMPETITION

click to enlarge

Finally, why not throw a little healthy competition into the party mix?  If you don’t already own them, head to the store because many of them (esp. party stores) already have Easter decorations out, so you’ll probably have no problem finding “football-shaped” plastic eggs.  They’re inexpensive ($2 for a bag of them), so they’d be the perfect storage container for your guests to place their game winning score prediction.  To make it easy, set out 2 separate bowls and label one for the Patriots and one for the Giants.  Set these out with some slips of paper and a pen at the beginning or end of the food table so each of your guests can write down their name and what they predict to be the winner’s score.  Instruct them to then, place their prediction in a football egg, close it and drop it in the bowl of who they predict to be the winner.  Finally, have them also (anonymously) write down their “score” prediction on a nearby pad of paper (under their winning team’s name) for everyone to see, so there are no duplicate predictions for either team.  At the end of the game, open the eggs in the winning team’s bowl to determine who came the closest to their final score, without going over, and have a prize (restaurant gift certificate would be perfect!) for the winner.

Good luck to both the New England Patriots and New York Giants; it looks to be a great game!  [kickoff is Sunday, February 5, 2012 @ 6:30 p.m. on NBC]  

And while you’re here, don’t forget to check out my other easy, YUMMY recipes under the RECIPES tab, located in the top tool bar of this page.

Enjoy the Creativity… and the game!

Eileen

Early Valentine gift to Mother Nature

[click on photos, for larger view]

During Christmas, I purchased a small, inexpensive Frazier Fir tree to place inside a beautiful winter sled-tree stand given to me by one of my clients.  I loved the idea of having a fresh tree on The Seasonal Home’s front porch (close to the front door) so I can enjoy a wonderful pine smell each time I pass by.

It just so happened that I placed the tree in front of the kitchen window and one day, while doing the dishes, I noticed a sweet bird, who landed in my fir tree to rest.  I would have been thrilled if my feathered visitor had stayed long enough for me to take a photo, but as quick as it landed… it was gone.  I immediately started thinking about ways I could encourage more birds to visit the tree (it’s just too wonderful to recycle yet!), but it wasn’t until I was about to throw out a stale loaf of bread that the solution came to me… fill my tree with welcome winter bird treats!

Even though I’m still filtering my way through organizing holiday decorations, my thoughts are already heading towards St. Valentine’s Day.  And based on the huge amount of visitors, to my site, who are searching for Valentine, St. Patrick’s Day & Easter ideas, I must not be alone in that thought process (lol)!  Anyway, those thoughts gave me the idea to pull out my Valentine cookie cutter and use it to create several winter birdie (treat) ornaments to hang on my tree.

So, after gathering my jar of peanut butter, a roll of thin ribbon, my container of bird seed and the loaf of stale bread, I was ready to go into production.  First, I used my cookie cutter to create heart-shaped pieces of bread.  Next, I spread peanut butter on one side (of each piece) and using a toothpick, poked a hole in the center of the top/middle of each side of the heart.  Now, it was time to feed the ribbon through the 2 holes and tie a knot.  (HINT): I found that the bread dries out quickly, so it would be best to create the 2 holes & feed the ribbon through, as soon as you’ve spread the peanut butter.  The last step is to dip the side of the bread with peanut butter on it into a plate of bird seed and your ornaments are complete and ready to hang!

I hope lots of feathered friends visit my tree of winter treats and allow me the privilege of photographing their beauty, in exchange.

 

Enjoy the Creativity!

Eileen