How to Fancify Your Salad

It’s still too hot here to prepare and eat much more than salads. So instead of bore you with salad recipes, I’m going to show you how I made ice bowls for serving salads.

You will need 2 bowls, plastic or metal (not glass), one about an inch in diameter smaller than the other. I had on hand two smallish bowls.




Decide how you want to decorate your bowl. Since my bowls were for salad greens, I thought orange slices would be a nice contrast. These are sliced thick and I actually used six for my bowl.




Fill the larger bowl about half full with water. If you were using chopped herbs or anything small, you would stir those into the water at this point. If using the orange slices, place the smaller bowl into the larger bowl. Secure it to the larger bowl with a couple of pieces of water resistent tape to keep it centered.

Place the orange slices in between the bowls. Finish securing the bowls with more tape.

Place the bowls into the freezer to freeze overnight. I put a plate on top of mine for extra security.

When ready to use, remove from the freezer. Remove the tape and the smaller bowl. Turn the ice bowl upside down onto a plate and let it sit until it releases. Mine took 15 minutes. For serving, the ice bowl will need to sit on something that will keep it from moving and that you won’t mind getting wet. I just used a paper towel, but a pretty place mat would be much nicer!

And the result –

Doesn’t it look cool and refreshing?

It was so fun I decided to make another one with flowers. (These aren’t edible, but it was just a practice bowl.)

The bowls will keep in the freezer, I would imagine for quite a while. I made a single serving size, but if your freezer is big enough you could certainly make a family size bowl. This is an inexpensive and easy project. I didn’t have to buy a single thing to make these bowls. Some other ideas I had were:

Use just water for a clear bowl to serve strawberry ice cream.
Use tinted water to serve vanilla ice cream.
Use water filled with lots of green herbs to serve colorful fresh fruit.

I’m not a crafty person AT ALL and I know any of you could make a much nicer bowl than I did. I would love to see what you come up with!

Finally, a special heartfelt thanks to shellyfish of Musings from the Fishbowl, Sam of I’m Vegan and Therefore Cooler Than You, and Katy of Legally Vegan for nominating my blog for the Brillante Weblog Award!

I’m honored that you thought of me. Rather than pass the award along to seven others (it has made the rounds!), I nominate everyone on my blogroll (and any others bloggers I visit but haven’t yet updated to the roll) because I truly admire your skills in the kitchen and your passion for veganism.

Now I’m off to make lots of salads for tonight’s dinner!