Play Food We Can Hardly Keep From Eating

We have been interested in checking out some felt play food for a while - we have plenty of the block-based kind from Melissa & Doug and Haba - sliceable bread and veggies, tiny wooden mushrooms and chocolates in tins, a metal egg with a fabric white and yolk. Some things just seemed like they'd work better with felt.

But we really had no idea LillyBean's eats would look so tasty.

LillyBean is a maker of truly gorgeous wool felt play foods. Clever designs, great colors, nice details, and generous proportions set their stuff apart. A few things we love, did not request for review, and will probably buy soon:

What we did request, and LillyBean was kind enough to send us, was their salad mix, their pita sandwich, and a set of asparagus spears. We expected it to look nice, but seriously.

A few closeups.

Cukes come on the veggie pita, along with a lettuce leaf, two tomato slices, a cheese slice, and a pita pocket.
This thrilling cherry tomato garnishes the salad, which includes two kinds of lettuce (one is shown below), spinach (topping the bowl of salad above), and carrots (more on those shortly). But just one? More tomatoes! We think they could even sell these in a set, maybe in a little mesh bag. Or maybe we are just nuts about cherry tomatoes - we have a garden full of them, or rather of the plants, which are still working on those tomatoes.

These carrot pieces, most likely intended to represent baby carrots, were the one item we thought could have been better designed. They could have been made as rounds, like the cucumbers, but they would have bee pretty small and it would probably be hard to do justice to the subtle ring of the carrot's core that so define carrot slices. But as they are, they are a bit of a strained interpretation, unlike anything else we saw in the set. For the moment at least we have decided to treat them an unusual species of ravioli.

Gorgeous, firm asparagus spears. Sold in a three-pack, tied with a piece of string.

These sets are all packaged very nicely in ways that will make gift-giving with LillyBean a pretty obvious thought when you get your first order. This is not something we tend to notice as we're tearing into product samples, but each of the sets was packaged in its own type of plastic packaging that was clearly selected to show it off, tied with a small ribbon, and had a cardstock tag tied to it with a piece of string. The effect is one that combines professionalism and consistency (something that might be unfamiliar to people who own a couple of pieces of grayish, hairy felted toys) with an essential hand-tended feel.

You can buy LillyBean felted foods at the LillyBean store.

Like Z's new dishes? More on those tomorrow.