Warning: This Chinese New Year video might cause you to run for your hankie. From Bernas, a rice distribution company. -via The Daily What

Zoos love to give their animals holiday treats, but for the most part, it’s just little more than a pumpkin. But this lemur feast at the San Francisco Zoo goes beyond the norm, providing the little guys with silver plates, candles, lovely centerpieces and a tasty meal.

Link Via Laughing Squid

If art made from Thanksgiving food isn’t quite your thing, then what about delicious turkey dinner cupcakes? The bottom is made from turkey meatloaf, which is then topped with stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy and cranberry sauce.

What do you think? Yum or yuck?

Link Via BuzzFeed

The Entire Meal

While there are tons of artists who work with food out there, Jason Mecier is the only one I could find that actually created a portrait using aspects of a traditional Thanksgiving dinner. Using turkey, sweet potatoes, corn, mushrooms, onions, green beans, cranberries and more, Mecier was able to construct a portrait of Sarah Hale, the woman largely considered responsible for the creation of a national Thanksgiving holiday. Personally, I couldn’t think of a more appropriate subject for a Thanksgiving meal artwork.

It might not be as artistic as some of the other creations on this list, but the Meta Turkey was the winner for Best Conceptual Turkey in the 2008 Turkey-shaped Jell-O Mold Competition. So what makes a turkey mold become a Meta Turkey? It must contain aspects of all parts of a traditional Thanksgiving dinner, including turkey, cranberry sauce, gravy, stuffing and mashed potatoes.

Sweet Potato Casserole

This entrant into the 2008 Turkey-shaped Jell-O Mold Competition might just be the only artwork on this list that you would actually want to serve at your own Thanksgiving meal. That’s because aside from its strange turkey shape, the sweet potato pineapple casserole adorned with marshmallows and pecans looks simply delicious. Of course, I would recommend toasting the marshmallows before serving, but that’s just me.

Potatoes

Flickr user ReRe is quite the artist when it comes to photographing fruits and vegetables. In fact, she has two different potato artworks that are both so cute, I couldn’t choose which one to include –the red potato hippo or the white potato elephant. (So I included them both.) Which is your favorite?

Corn

Artists Akiko Ida and Pierre Javelle specialize in shooting tiny people interacting with the surface of regular-sized food. In their Paris Roubais piece, we see a few cyclists racing along corn on the cob, with the leader flying off his bike after apparently hitting too big of a kernel.

Rice

Not everyone eats rice on Thanksgiving, but those that do are certain to appreciate Carl Warner’s farm-styled foodscape featuring rice, thyme, parsley, almonds and other common ingredients of a more modernized Thanksgiving dinner.

Butter

While Jim Victor has made tons of butter sculptures throughout the years, perhaps the most appropriate Thanksgiving artwork is the one featuring cow cheerleaders. After all, not only is there plenty of football on Thanksgiving Day to satiate cheerleaders of any type, but I’m sure cows are happy to celebrate any holiday where turkey tends to be the meat of choice.

Bread

If the rolls on the dinner table looked like this angry bread man by Bella Tamas, I’m guessing we’d all be a little more cautious about slicing them open and spreading them with butter. Then again, if he’s using the knife to threaten us, then it might come down to a battle of human versus roll, in which case, you’d be a fool not to slice his head open.

Onions

Flickr user Stereomind’s cleverly carved onion artwork is something I think we can all relate with, especially when prepping up the onions to use for our traditional turkey stuffing. For me, just looking at this piece gets my eyes watery.

Squash

This little guy by Carl Kleiner might not be ready to eat, but that’s just fine since he’s too darn cute to even imagine roasting in an oven. For more food that’s simply too precious to munch on, including zebra eggplants and smiling watermelons, be sure to check out this fantastic gallery on Juxtapoz.

When it comes to stunning centerpieces, Francesco Scravaglieri’s Rassegna Calabria should certainly take center stage. Between the delicate and detailed bird feathers and the amazingly intricate squash flowers, every inch of Scravaglieri’s squash carving is simply stunning.

Pomegranate

There might not be any food as close to a grenade as a pomegranate both in looks, taste and likelihood of exploding into a huge, stain-filled mess. That’s why Sarah Illenberger’s take on the fruit is just so perfect. Just make sure you don’t put any of these around the table if you are expecting to have one of those drama-filled family holidays.

Cake

Of course, it’s not Thanksgiving without some kind of sweet treat and while you might choose to make your whole dinner into a cake, or make a giant cake with two pies baked inside of it, if you prefer just plain cake that has an artistic Thanksgiving flair, then try making your own turkey cake like this one by Geri of Joshua, TX. There are instructions to make your own over at Cake Decorating Ideas free, but if you make one, just make sure you don’t get it mixed up with your real turkey when it comes time to serve dinner.

The closest I’ve ever come to food art is making a snowman with my mashed potatoes and once designing a blueberry pie with an American flag crust. But I’m sure some of you are better artists than I am. That being said, have any of you ever done something creative with your Thanksgiving leftovers or cooked your dinner into an interesting design?

Three weeks ago, in the golden light of an early-summer evening, thousands of Parisians dressed entirely in white converged on two of the city’s most picturesque locations — 4,400 of them in the plaza at the cathedral of Notre Dame; 6,200 in a courtyard of the Louvre — for a feast that was neither advertised nor publicly heralded. They had brought along not only their own epicurean repasts but also their own tables, chairs, glasses, silver and napery.

At midnight, after dining and dancing, they packed up their dishes, stowed their empty Champagne bottles in trash bags brought for that purpose, stooped to pick up their cigarette butts from the cobbles and departed. The landmarks were left immaculate, with no traces of the revelry of the previous three hours.

Diner en Blanc is now coming to New York. Liesl Schillinger of The New York Times has the scoop: Link

If your kid doesn’t find dinner time enjoyable, maybe this will help make meals fun: Food Face Kid’s Dinner Plate. The plate has a picture of a face that your kid can decorate with food. Pasta hair, mashed potato beards, and string bean eyebrows – the possibilities are endless!

Check out the plate as well as our growing list of neat dishware, drinkware and flatware over at the Neatorama Online Shop: Link

The folks at Extreme Craft blog spotted a dinner at the Eureka Gem Show at Redwood Acres fairground, California, that rocks (literally!) The food are made of rocks, gems, and minerals. I think they cheated on the parsley, but who could resist that yummy rock bacon?

Link

This papercraft turkey is not only cute, but it also would make a great centerpiece. There’s also a cute pilgrim and indian couple to download. Get yours free here.

If you can’t make it home to Thanksgiving dinner, here’s an adorable set up to make you feel nice and cozt anyway. Can you tell what it is? Here’s a hint, it’s a cake in a cup form. Yup, it’s a cup cake Thanksgiving dinner.

Link

Via Cute Overload