A sprinkling of parsley, chopped green onions, and shaved carrots add color to any dish. Slices of avocado, cantaloupe, or strawberry fans give any everyday entree a festive appearance. Edible flowers give a change of pace, especially to desserts. Putting chocolate or caramel sauce in a squeeze-type bottle give you an artistic advantage. Spooning a sauce on bottom of a plate, placing your entree in middle of sauce, and then sprinkling with chives, chutney or parsley gives a bistro effect. Mint leaves give a pretty appearance as well as a hint of freshness.

Use food to serve food. Hollow out bell peppers in an assortment of colors (red, yellow, green, purple, etc.) and present your condiments in a special way. Scoop out watermelons, or oranges, and fill with fruit balls, or sherbet. Viola!

Varying way you slice your vegetables, or fruit adds a different “slant” to side dishes. Simple touches add so much appeal to any meal. Serving a creamed dish on toast-vary way you cut toast. Diamond, slant, or even strips give a new look to your presentation.

Another advantage to using food to accent food is that your guests don’t have to “finger” decoration and remove it before they can enjoy meal. It is also more sanitary and thoughtful.

Experimenting with garnishes is half fun of a party. The other half is seeing delight in eyes of your guests, not to mention way they appreciate what you serve.

Enjoy your party and have fun preparing it. The colors of nature are beautiful and intriguing, so use them to your heart’s content. ©Arleen M. Kaptur 2002 May

Mornings are hectic in New World. Mom is up with her soccer uniform on, dad may or may not be there, it does not matter anymore, it is OK. Marriage is desired but, hey, been there, done that, what is next? The kids gobble down highly sugarcoated or frosted chemical by-products of favorite cartoon characters, heroes who stand in place of dad, whether there or not. Out door to oversized van or sports utility vehicle manufactured for expanding account of a marketer somewhere in Arizona. The baby, third and last child - because of dirty looks from neighbors - is strapped helplessly into government regulated “burden” seat and driven to nearest socialist adolescent camp. Yes, cared for adequately by a passable educator of a being and other 450 adolescent socialist of New World, child smiles happily because it is among its people, its subjugated peers, its future commandants. Next, dropped at minimal security educational institute up street, older of children begin multicultural day among a variety of color and sexual preferences. Entering building along with associates and fellow clique members, all wearing NWO (New World Order) T-shirts, slipping through high tech security door, they head to first class, Alternative Lifestyle 101. Some go to institutionally required course Sexual Decisions: Middle Level Premarital Education 101. Down hall and out only other door is Technology building that offers courses in Allusionary Imagery 101, Simulated Human Cloning 101, 102, Advanced Global Shield Physics, and Social Order by way of Persuasive Democracy, a cap-stone course. While passing through thirty-foot wide hallways, graffiti-stained walls (expressions of student’s feelings) brighten atmosphere making statements of what future will bring. Curse words echo hallway mixed with screaming lyrics from $400 compact disc boxes extorted from parents by kids through guilt. Glitters of light bounce from faces and mouths and bellies and fingers of kids who express creativity through ear, nose, throat, eye, and tongue-rings. Teachers, or faculty, compromise with kids to enter class with an anxious eye, promising them medically prescribed drugs in order for all just to make it through day, or just get along.

Flashbacks of wooden room hunt kids all day. Anxiety attacks press them sore and they move around, and talk and talk and move around. They sit in emotionally prepared classroom and reflect to past of wooden room. They curse parents in depths of heart and glance at a friend across emotional battlefield. The friend glances back with a deaden look, also remembering wooden room. Other kids sense reflection, anxiety, and inability not to move, not talk, and not move. They too, remember wooden room. The room imbedded minds of all kids. Branded onto brain like a tattoo, like one on her hip, his forearm, her shoulder, his hand, her breast, and his back, her behind, his belly. Imbedded like illusions of combat inside machine at corner store where they meet after release from “institution.” Imbedded, like frustration and bitterness against lost time, replaced by temporal electronics. The wooden room, so cold, so crowded, yet so lonely. The wooden room, so blue, so red, so far from love. When it is time to make everything better, New World will be a wooden room to all, and then all can rid world of love.