“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.
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