Cheese Garden

This works easily as a lunch, but it could also be very pretty on a large tray for a brunch or a party. You can put as many layers on the flowers as you want, and you can run chives down the center of the "petals" for more detail (I suggest you score a channel in the cheese for the chive to rest in if you do that.)

This lunch is on a bed of heirloom lettuce, and is composed of uncured sausage (no nitrites), Muenster cheese, carrots, bell peppers and Aioli mustard- as "glue" and also to decorate the center of the flowers. As I stacked the layers, I put a dollop of mustard on the back of each piece to keep it in place. I sent this with pretzels and crackers, a Luna bar, some apple sauce, and a dessert. The flowers are 3 1/2" across, to give you a sense of scale. This also looks pretty if you use chia seeds (or some other small seed) to sprinkle on the mustard in the center. That just gives the whole thing more detail.