“Tablescaping” is a real word, it’s a verb, and more importantly, it’s all the rage right now. We decided to put a sustainable and edible spin on ours because what’s more fun than ending the day with a bouquet you can eat? Everything we used to build this sustainable tablescape is either edible or upcycled and served alongside it all were a few of our favorite crowd-pleasing and food-waste fighting recipes. Learn how to make a sustainable tablescape of your own by checking out a few of our ideas below.
Make Fruit and Veggie Votives
We picked oranges, lemons, and artichokes to make adorable and compostable candle votives. Their sturdy outer peels made them easy to stand-up and left us feeling confident they wouldn’t topple over and go rolling across the table.
Artichoke Candles
If the artichokes don’t sit upright on their own, use a sharp knife to slice off the stem to create a flat base for the artichokes to sit flat on.
At the top of the artichokes, use a sharp paring knife to cut out holes wide enough for tealights to sit in. You may need to use your fingers to hollow out the artichokes for the candles to fit.
Orange and Lemon Candles
Most oranges and lemons sit upright by themselves, so simply use a sharp paring knife to cut holes big enough for tea lights to safely rest in.
Place tea lights in the votives and arrange them across your table.
Saved Stems Bouquets with Edible Flouishes
We combined two bouquets of our Saved Stems with fresh produce from our Imperfect box to make small arrangements across the table. We assembled them in upcycled jars and added fresh water with a hint of sugar to keep them fresh.
We picked fresh produce with beautiful greens to make our arrangements edible. We chose radishes for a hint of whimsy, kale as a filler, rainbow chard for pops of color, and asparagus because we wanted to eat them later. Later on, you can either roast the veggies or make them into a fresh salad right at the table.
Upcycled Vases
Instead of buying vases, you can upcycle glass jars from pasta sauces, salsa, kombucha bottles, olive oil etc.
To remove paper labels off the jars, soak them in warm water and equal parts cooking oil and baking soda for about 30 minutes. Use a coarse sponge to scrub the labels off.
Especially sticky labels can usually be coaxed loose if you melt the adhesive with a blow dryer.
Check out Jackie Alpers’s top tips on how to present and preserve your florals.
Food Waste Fighting Recipes
Strawberry-top Infused Sparkling Water
After chopping up strawberries for a fruit salad, we were left with way too many strawberry tops to just toss away. Since strawberry greens are completely edible, we dropped them into glasses of sparkling water to add a refreshing hint of berry essence to humdrum glasses of water!
For more food waste fighting recipes, check out a few of our favorites here.
You might find these a-peel-ing
So pretty! I want to have lunch at that table!
We’re with you there! ????
Renew my account
Hey there! We’d love to! Send us a note here [bit.ly/385DIoA] and we can get your account back up and running! ????
“Heres how to not waste food. Turn your food into decorations.” No, imma not save my onion skins and turn it into some sorta christmas tree ornament, and no. Im not gunna gouge out a perfectly good lime just so i can shove a candle into it like an insane person when i already have a candle.
Do whatever feels best for you, but we’re just trying to shed some light on a few ideas to help save on food waste and have people think outside of the box when it comes to sustainability! ????
Are saved stems available everywhere? I looked for them when I ordered food from imperfect foods yesterday but did not see them available.
They’re available in most markets! Definitely continue to keep an eye for them in upcoming customization windows! ????
For the lemon and orange votives: You can juice the fruit first, cutting them not in half but in a smaller circumference on top that is just big enough for the reamer to fit through. Then partially fill the fruit shell to the depth needed with cut-up produce bound for the compost heap. Set the votive on top!
Thank you so much for this tip! ????
This doesn’t have anything to do with article. Why don’t you have an grocery order list that people can add what they want prior to the actual order date? This gives more shopping days than just the two day window to shop. I wish there is better way to communicate. I still find your ordering confusing.
With our “food preferences” feature, you can add items to your “recurring” list and/or “never” list to either have those items automatically added to your order each week. or left out. Check out more about this here: bit.ly/2SXOJSH ????
I hear ya! I think it has to do with availability of product, especially fresh food items.
I need a call from customer service NOW.
I CANCELLED my subscription after my last delivery. Now I get a message they are on 5here way, and the payment is already out of my checking account. Thus is unacceptable. I also sent a message ..reply..early this morning.
Hey there, we’re sorry about this mixup. Can you please give us a call at (510) 595-6683 ????
I cancelled an order unbeknownst to me *after* the date to cancel them. Got the same “on our way” text. Used the chat and got to a Living being and voiced my concern and need to cancel the order – and charge. She cancelled the charge and said i could give the order to someone who needed it (with so many people without homes in Oakland, that’s not hard to do), but they couldn’t stop delivery.I asked if i could suspend my acct “until further notice” because i forget to cancel orders. She did it for me and said to open a chat the next time i want to order and they would reinstate my acct. I use the chat feature a lot now.
I need get a e-mail so I can shop have not got one in three weeks please send soon I don’t like get boxes that are not my pick. thank you
Hey there! We definitely encourage you to add our email to your contacts and check your spam/promotional folder. Sometimes the emails can end up in there. Also we always encourage everybody to set an alarm each week of when to customize, because these are courtesy emails we send out… and sometimes they can get lost in cyber space.