The Veggie Poodle Platter

The Veggie Poodle Platter is an old design (you can probably tell from the photos) that I realized I had never posted on my blog in its entirety. It was for a little girl's birthday party and it was pretty simple to create using a couple heads of cauliflower, toothpicks and some other veggies and dip.

The original post was up on Squidoo which sold their content to Hubpages. I posted this how-to there years back when this blog was just starting out and getting zero traffic. By posting content on the other sites, I was able to make affiliate revenue and ad share revenue from this post but it is badly in need of an update. I figured now that this blog has found its place on the web, why not post the Veggie Poodle Platter here!

Here's what you need to do this...

Fresh Ingredients:

2 Cauliflower heads
1 Broccoli head
1 ea Red, Orange, Yellow Peppers
1 container Grape Tomatoes
1 can/jar black olives
1 bunch/bag carrots
several stalks of celery
2 bunches of Kale
1 bag of small colored Peppers

Non-Food Ingredients:

Divided Container
Round Toothpicks
Styrofoam*
Hot Glue/Gun*
several Skewers*
1-2 Chenille, Pipe Cleaner or wire*

*optional items. I think you could make this without any of these and just have to poodle "body" not attached to anything, especially if you are not going to travel with this platter. If you are traveling with the platter, I would attach it to the base (as I did).

Constructing Your Base

Hot glue a small block of styrofoam in the center of your plastic veggie tray.

Then lay a piece of chenille, pipe cleaner or wire across the top and attach with some hot glue. You will be using this to tie down the body of your poodle (the stem of the cauliflower).

Next, hot glue another larger block of styrofoam on top of the first block and pipe cleaner, sandwiching the pipe cleaner between the two blocks, locking it in there.

I like to use the styrofoam, because it makes a good base to attach the dog's body especially if you are going to travel with this piece.

You could certainly work with this without gluing the styrofoam if you want to use a nicer dish. I would carve the stem of the cauliflower to fit a little more naturally in the center and once you pack a lot of veggies around it, it will lock it into place pretty well.

Constructing Your Poodle

If you are using the styrofoam and pipe cleaner, tie the cauliflower to the base.

Make sure you are using the shape of the cauliflower and how it sits on your platter in the best possible positioning.

Use 4 nice large pieces of cauliflower on round toothpicks to construct the head. Use skewers to poke holes in the "body" so the head pieces will slip in without too much of a battle.

You can add more cauliflower pieces to the head in the back to round it out.

Lay down a bunch of Kale around the base of your dog.

Poke in 2 nice pieces of cauliflower for the legs of the poodle.

Let the Kale cover up the toothpicks, styrofoam, pipe cleaners etc.

Add in all your veggies and don't forget the tail!