Here is an appetizer to prepare. You need carrots, black olives (pitted), cream cheese, and toothpicks. We are going to make penguins.

Take a carrot and make two longitudinal cuts to the center, roughly 45^o apart. The idea is to cut out a wedge. Then slice the carrot into rounds. You will end up with a bunch of pie slices, and a bunch of pies with one slice removed. I am going to be thoroughly geeky and call these inverse slices :-)>

I suppose you could do it the other way around–cut the rounds first, and then cut out the wedges. That seems like a lot more work.

Take one of the olives, cut a hole in it at the equator (remember, I am a geek, not a cook), and stick a wedge into it, base first. This is the penguin’s head. The carrot wedge is the beak.

Take another olive. Slice it open (but not through) longitudinally. Stuff cream cheese into the gap. This is the penguin’s body, with the cream cheese as the belly.

Take these two olives, and stick the toothpick through them vertically. Align the beak with the belly. Take one of the inverse slices. but it below the body, and push the toothpick through it. Align the gap with the belly and beak. You have the penguin’s feet! The toothpick holds the whole thing together.

Taken from an appetizer seen, and eaten, at the Easter vigil party tonight at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Minneapolis, where two of the members honeymooned in Antarctica. I claim no credit for this! I just observed carefully to facilitate reverse engineering.

Tonight’s version used standard canned black olives. I might try Kalamatas if I do it.