When I was little, I would take little broccoli trees and plant them on my rice, and I would pretend to be a giant plucking trees from the ground and eating them.  It feels so empowering to a 5-year-old.  Look, Ma, I’m eating trees!  Except Ma did not find it very funny, because food is to be eaten, not played with.

Well, I think food can be played with.

Bob Blumer is one of my favorite chefs.  I love his creativity and his recipes.  Cooking always seems so fun when he does it.  And he is always playing with his food!

In particular, I love this caesar salad recipe from him, because I just find it incredibly fun to eat a salad that looks like it’s growing out of my plate.

Look, Ma, I’m eating a salad!

The recipe is here on Foodnetwork.  It’s easy enough that I was willing to try it out.  The salad dressing is really good, and making the crouton collar was a lot of fun.

One thing to note is that his recipe doesn’t talk about what to do with the white part of the bread you pluck out from the crust.  I cut the pieces into cubes, drizzled the cubes with olive oil, and baked the cubes along with the collar.  These cubes then become extra croutons you can put on the salad.

On my picture is also a piece of grilled wild salmon.  Costco has fillets of wild salmon for a really great price.  We season it with salt and pepper, grill it, and eat it with fresh lemon juice drizzled on it.