Hello it's great to see you.
I'm fig. I'm a singer-songwriter,
performer,
music therapist, and music instructor in
Cleveland, Ohio
and I just wanted to invite you to my
picnic today.
I know it's been really scary and the pandemic
has been really wild
but I'm really glad to share this moment
with you.
So I'm gonna be playing some songs for
you. I hope you enjoy.
This first song is called "Vulture".
*music*
So this next song that I have for you is
called "Soft Animal"
which is the title of the album that I
am recording
and is an homage to a Mary Oliver poem
in which she says you only have to let
the soft animal of your body love what
it loves.
So here is.
*music*
My next song is called "Sea Legs"
Make sure you stay hydrated or
maybe have a glass of wine.
*music*
Thank you so much for hanging out with
me today.
I've been fig and there's one more thing
I want to show you
before we end our time together and
it's my music video for my song
"Pomegranate".
So you should definitely check that out
and thanks so much for tuning in. You can
follow me
everywhere at fignewtunes,
f-i-g-n-e-w-t-u-n-e-s.
Thank you so much again!
"I keep plucking the seeds
of these pomegranates that you
gave to me.
I put them all swirling inside of my
mouth,
sometimes I hold them in afraid
that I'll choke
but it's hard to taste seeds when they
fall right down your throat.
My mother always told me don't swallow the seeds
but I was hoping something would grow
inside of me.
My mother always told me the seeds would take root
but pomegranate seeds are already fruit. Pomegranates line
my entire window sill.
I'm trying to eat them all I've got
a whole stomach to fill.
You told me they were sweet
and I believed what I heard. So I swallowed them whole like I swallowed your every word.
My mother always told me don't eat the seeds. But I was hoping something would grow inside of me.
My mother always told me the seeds would take root
But all of her pomegranate seeds were already fruit.
I keep swallowing the seeds
Devouring them whole
Swallowing these seeds
Devouring these seeds
I though would take root
None of them would ever stuck
And I didn't even taste the fruit
My mother always told me
Don't eat the seeds
But I was hoping something would grow inside of me
My mother always told me the seeds would take root
But all her pomegranate seed were already fruit
Hi hello this is our take two.
We just made a really nice video and it
didn't save so.
So I am Colleen and I'm Tiara
and we are co-owners of Blanket and
Board which is a
luxury picnic service. We throw picnics
in the park
or at your house and you get really nice
with
candles and blankets and fresh flowers
and a lovely charcuterie board.
So we're making a board that's inspired
by
a painting by John F. Francis
called a "Still Life with Fruit and Wine".
So we have a lot of fruit and a bottle
of wine
and some vegetables too.
Yeah and he just happens to be from the
great state of Pennsylvania like we are.
Whoa I guess Colleen you're not from. I am
not. But you live here now, you're in
Pennsylvania.
Resident, I am a resident yes.
Okay so um yeah so let's get started.
We started making a board
yes we started with the caprese skewers
which I'm going to make another one.
Right yeah so for caprese skewers
you're going to want these little grape
tomatoes
um mozzarella balls and fresh
basil. This is from Tiara's garden
it is from my garden, my little herb
garden.
It's flourishing it is yeah.
I'm gonna make one too. All right
um soI like to put a tomato on,
a fresh piece of basil, fresh piece of
mozzarella then another fresh piece of
basil
and then another tomato
we've been using grape tomatoes.
um
This is probably my favorite part of the
board yeah
and um so once you're done we like to
drizzle it with some balsamic glaze.
We have this really amazing glaze
from Olive and Marlow.
They are in the Strip District. This
is a thick balsamic vinaigrette
and then this is a meyer
lemon extra virgin olive oil.
Yeah um charcuterie boards are a really
nice light
you know snack. I mean sometimes like I
eat it for dinner,
all the time, sometimes right.
We actually like bonded over our love
for our community when we started to
like travel together
um and we're social workers so we were
like we couldn't afford to go to like
nice restaurants
so we would just come in and go shopping. We bring in cooler, go to the grocery
store,
buy everything we need for a charcuterie
board right.
Trader Joe's is a really great place to
start.
Yes we've been frequenting um
Trader Joe's and Whole Foods. Yes that's
where we try to get most of our products
you know it's fresh, love they have a lot
of organic options
and they have a lot of interesting
varieties of things like
I don't know where else I could find
figs. Okay you know
yeah they have a really good selection
of like, I love their
like cured meats, they're cheese we still
use this I don't know how to pronounce
them
I think it's Bella Vittano and
the other one is Machego. Okay that one's
easy.
Yeah um Bella Vittano one has like a
purple
rind um it's really
good. I think it's like made with like
merlot
oh yeah red wine um so
yeah so they say to every great charcuterie board
you always have
like three um vegetables, three fruits
um good cheese of course,
um some meats, um something salty
so like we have some nuts here it's a
mixed nut like melody was like different
with um
hazelnuts, almonds, cashews pistachios,
um pretzels yeah we're gonna add some
more pretzels.
You want to get that salty crunch.
There's a lot of soft cheese yeah and
and if you're you know if you don't eat
meat you know you don't have to um you
know put meat or cheese on the board if
you
you know you're vegan. We just bought
some vegan cheese
yeah it can still be called the
charcuterie even if there's no meat.
Yeah it doesn't have to be just the meat
and cheese board.
We put caprese skewers on almost all of
our boards.
Yeah they're a big thing at our picnics too.
Yeah um so yeah the other things that
you want to have a variety of colors
yes um and then you want to like stagger
the colors out. So like we have some red
and yellow peppers
um with carrots carrots. There's a lot of
orange over here so I'm gonna put these
over.
Okay some peas. I
am going toI love cucumbers
um iIlike to like kind of
uh stack them on the board.
The boards always look really good when
the food is kind of falling
on each other um and we kind of figured
that out when we
were preparing too much food for the
size of the board,
but when we figured out
how to cram it all on there, the boards
actually ended up looking really nice
and it's a lot of food it's like. Yes it
is, you'd be surprised.
It seems like an appetizer but it's very
filling.
I'm gonna add some more nuts. We also
so some people like to you know dip
their vegetables so we also have
um a spinach dip pair. We also use spinach dip
that um
during our picnics. It's really popular.
Yeah um bruschetta,
like fresh bruschetta is really good um
on the board.
Mustard um like a balsamic glaze or
olive oil.
The pretzels and the mustard are really
good and the meat and the mustard is
really good too.
So yeah some people like to use like a
jam.
Yes we have some jam, put some grapes
because
a charcuterie board is not complete without grapes
and there's grapes in that painting, it had a
lot of grapes
one thing that I've noticed is um
I don't like it when there's too many
savory things
touching the sweet things so I don't
like it when the spinach dip
is touching the fruit, the fruit like
that
a touching cherries
um so I'm gonna put the jam over here by
the grapes.
That's see I'm like that too
but with the vinegar so like when you
put the olives and the pickles in a
I don't like if they're next to
like the strawberries the strawberries
because then you have like vinegary
strawberries,
which the the balsamic next to the
strawberries is pretty good,
never thought about that. Oh really?
So here we have strawberries
we have some strawberries
um we've been using a lot of seasonal
fruit but everybody loves strawberries.
Right um so the salami for the meat, like
we just used some regular
salami. I rolled it and stuck it under
like the peas
because it looks really nice rolled. Um
prosciutto
um good roll too
and they look like hearts and i think
they're really they look like hearts.
It's unfortunate be careful though
because strawberries can stain your
your board yes they can. Use a dark board
yeah picking a board is really important
too um.
We have this nice thin long board
today um maybe circle boards in the past
yeah the circle ones look really nice,
circles like the tiered ones
okay those are kind of fun the tear
boards are nice.
We've been using the spicy
salami a lot here. Oh my god that salami
is so good.
Yeah okay
some pepperoni.
There's this one peppered salami, it's
just salami but it's
it's just like ground pepper around that
it's a little bougie because I know
we're like a little bit bougie with the
meats
and cheeses um but you could put
cheddar cheese,
we put cheddar and swiss and pepper jack
in our delivery boxes
in addition to the the merlot and the
manchego.
All right can you hand me the vinegar.
Yes
okay so here we have some pepperoncinis. I feel like charcuterie boards are
extremely like
um like you have to have like a pickle
or like an olive
on it. I feel like it's not even a board
if you don't have that on it,
however you can make boards for whatever
occasion
whatever occasion you want um like I've
seen people do like taco boards.
So instead of all of this you would have
like ground meat,
cheese, like pico de gallo, um it's cute
so you just like make your own taco we
do a brunch pair
we actually have a brunch booked like
tomorrow so like instead of um instead
of the meats and the cheeses, I mean we
put cheese on it but
we have bagels and cream cheese and
yogurt, boiled eggs,
avocado, coffee,
coffee, orange juice orange juice for
mimosas,
um chocolate chocolate yeah we put
chocolate on all of our boards. Oh we have
nutella
so you can like put it on your bagel so
like a brunch or your strawberries
um I saw someone do like a greek board
so they had like hummus
with the olive oil, they had feta cheese
um naan, sometimes tirup is the tzatziki
although I like it when you do that, it's
really good they have really good
technique,
but um from trader joe's and it's
actually not a greek yogurt which is
pretty
healthy. All right so I'm gonna put some
pickles over here.
I like to stick the chocolate around
wherever I put the oranges
oh and the strawberry so like if it's
hot and the chocolate melts
you have chocolate covered strawberries
and lately the chocolate has been
melting.
We've been starting to uh put dates and
figs on our boards
too. It's a sweet,
a healthy sweet.
No I like them oh okay um
I like the dates too, they're really easy.
I've never had
I guess I did. Oh my god I'm scared
no try it. I remember like when I was a
kid you remember fig newton's?
Yes it tastes like a fig newton.
Oh my god it's just like a fig newton!
It's a fig newton. These are dried figs. I
like figs now.
I didn't know you hadn't tried figs
because you're scared that you wouldn't
like it
because you don't like dates. Yeah I like
these.
Yeah I know they're different but but I
mean they're both a really sweet
dried thing. They taste really good with
the cheese.
All right that's so good
yeah um we also we put apples on our
boards
always but um we usually try to
cover them in lemon juice so that they
don't brown.
Yeah those brown really fast. This one's
but since we're gonna eat this now
uh we like to cut them in really thin
slice. Everything is really small
so that you can stab it with a toothpick.
That's important
especially with COVID because you don't
want people's hands touching everything
so we make sure there's always
toothpicks um
and I do the same thing with the apples
that Tiara does with the cucumbers,
just kind of layer them um
they look really nice it does and then
last but not least oh yeah
there's some carbs on this board. Oh wait
and I forgot that
usually we put blueberries but something
dark always looks really nice yeah the
blueberries
always make the boards look extremely
nice that pop of blue
and we sprinkle them across so I'm
doesn't like bread.
Okay.
Or you can use crackers you don't have
to use bread
or not or both.
Yeah and that this is our board. This is
our board.
Good job now we're gonna eat it. We're
gonna eat it.
Um yeah so you know thank you for
allowing us to share
our passion and our love of charcuterie
with you
and um if you get a chance look at us
www.blanketandboard.com
Blanket and Board
on Instagram and Facebook.
All right, bye!
