How to Make Fall Leaves from Carrots, and a Recipe

Fall is in the air here in Utah -finally!!  I LOVE fall! I really get tired of summer by the time it's August, and I get impatient for the weather to turn cooler and the leaves to start changing color. So even though it's probably going to get hot later today, I'm still serving lunches that feature fall leaves, cranberries, almonds, and apple cider salad dressing. I got out my fall-colored table cloth, and my fall leaf mini cutter... so I'm ready for fall!!

Also in my salad are purple potato slices ( that I cooked in a Zip n Steam bag), garbanzo beans, cheese, and my favorite adorable little pear tomatoes - I'll be sad when my garden stops producing them!

Making fall leaves is a simple garnish to do.  They look great on  a salad, but look just as impressive on top of a sandwich. It's also a fun way to dress up some leftovers for lunch the next day 🙂  Last night I took a few pictures to show you how to make some:

First take a big carrot - as big as you can find. Peel and slice it on the diagonal to get the biggest surface possible. You can also use purple potato, sweet potato, or yellow zucchini for some other pretty fall colors.

Next you'll need some leaf mini cutters - here's the set that has the leaf one that I'm using:

And here's a set I found that I'm probably going to order today - it looks so fun for upcoming  fall bentos!

Cut some leaves...

If the carrot slices are thin, and your cutter is metal, you shouldn't have problems with the cutter going all the way through. But if it's too hard, just microwave the carrot slices for about a minute ( a Zip n Steam bag works well for this) and it will cut just fine.

Get a small, sharp paring knife to cut the leaf veins. Tilting the knife at a slight angle  ( to the right) make the first cut. Remember this is a shallow cut - you don't want to go all the way through.

Now tilt your knife the opposite way  ( to the left) and make the rest of the cut. You are actually cutting a v-shaped groove down the center of the leaf.

When the center vein is cut out, it looks like this:

It's a shame the pictures are blurry - but I hope you get the idea. You can leave your leaf like this, or cut more veins in your leaf like I did in my salad.

I made a similar salad for my husband, but he had to run out the door before I could get a picture. This is almost always how it goes each morning : ) But I want to show you that I do pack lunches for my family, not just myself, so I managed to snap a picture of my son's lunch before he went to school. He's in high school, so no cute fall leaves for him - but his chicken salad looks like this:

I did sneak in some star shaped cheese ... I hope that will be acceptable : ) All these salads were easy to put together because I did my weekly food prep last Friday.

(  BTW, my other son didn't want a salad, so he gets a sandwich for lunch, which he said he wanted to make himself)

Before I "leave" you today, I want to spread the autumn spirit around a little more by sharing the recipe for my Apple Cider Salad Dressing: