Last night, I was at a fancy dinner, and the butter that accompanied our baskets of bread had been formed into the shape of a swan.
Everyone at our table was reluctant to spoil the creation. I think we probably each took less butter than we might have otherwise.
The butter swan reminded me of the apple swans I used to make for my son when he was about four years old and going through a phase of not wanting to eat apples. One day, I decided on a whim to carve an apple into a swan, following instructions that came with a garnishing tool I had bought. All of a sudden, apples were appealing again!
By coincidence, a Facebook friend of mine posted a link recently to a YouTube video showing how to make apple birds. The instructions are a little more precise than I recall. I just cut freehand, without using parallel knives as guidelines. And my bird didn’t have eyes.
But it looked good, helped satisfy my creative outlet when I wasn’t doing a lot of writing, and convinced a preschooler to eat something nourishing!
