Are your dinner parties so last decade, darling?

Yes - that really is a bust made from mashed potato!

The events year for the RHS has kicked off with the annual Spring Plant fair, held at the exhibition halls in London (more on this in a later post).  Among all the exhibits of plants and vegetables we came across a new idea, which should strike terror into the hearts of any budding hosts or hostesses when planning their new round of dinner parties.

You all remember the craze for ice sculptures (of course, my home wouldn't be complete without one - Ed), but we could at least pretend that these were far too big (and wet) to be practical for the average home dinner.  It appears that these really are "so last decade", and that some bright spark has come up with a new idea to stress us all.

No longer is it enough to plant, grow, cook and serve your own home-grown vegetables, with a few artfully arranged flowers from your own cutting garden poking out of your handcrafted ice sculpture bowl, gracefully surrounded by starched napkins folded into perfect replicas of swans.  It appears that we now also have to sculpt all the mashed potato into wonderful new artwork as well.

Unfortunately, we were so amazed at some of the striking - and excellent - sculptures on display that we failed to note which varieties are normally used.   Since supermarkets currently list only the culinary uses of their varieties, we are left wondering how long it will take for Waitrose to list "suitable for sculpture" to "mashing, baking and boiling" when printing their packaging.

Perhaps we should add "potato sculpture" into our Autumn Show, under handicrafts or vegetables?  Or perhaps not ...