Culinary craft

Kitchen capers: It’s time to get crafty outside the kitchen.

This is one time when it’s okay to play with your food.

SCHOOL’S out for the next two weeks! So open your home kitchen to “cook up” three delectable dishes with the young ones. With a bit of imagination, you can churn out a variety of noodles from cord and string. Add bits and pieces of painted foam for ingredients. Twirl rolled-up paper straws to make your own version of tri-colour pasta. As for the pizzas, have lots of fun gluing on morsels of meat from wine corks.

Children delight in making a craft or toy. The joy is in the creative process of transforming what they imagine in their minds into reality. The toys they make from simple things give them the same fun as the ones they get as presents.

In his early childhood days, when my nephew needed a gun, he would quickly assemble and tape a couple of toilet rolls together. He had fun blasting away with his make-believe weapon. He and his sister would race one another, each crouched inside a box, their boats. And they would “row” with glee by pushing their palms against the floor!

Pizza and pasta

From foam food trays and plate, wine corks, cord and flyers

You need:

2 foam food trays

Wine corks – 1 synthetic, 1 natural cork

Flyers or magazine pages – yellow, orange, green and dark brown

Cord

UHU glue

1 chopstick

1 small foam plate

Scissors and cutter

Pencil and ruler

Acrylic or Plaka paints

Brushes

Making the spaghetti

1. Squeeze glue onto the foam plate and swirl a length of cord over it. Press the cord down to adhere it to the plate. Continue swirling the cord, dotting it with glue at intervals until you’ve formed a mound to your satisfaction. Glue the end of the cord onto the middle at the top.

2. Paint the plate of cords light yellow, as spaghetti.

3. Cut 1cm squares from the brown flyer and roll them between your fingers to form tiny balls. Glue them onto the top of the spaghetti as mince meat.

Making the pasta – fusili tricolo­ri

1. Measure and cut the yellow, orange and green flyers into half across. Trim each half page into quarters. Roll each strip, from the long side, into a straw. Glue the edge to secure the straw.

2. Hold one end of the paper straw in the middle of a chopstick with one hand. Twirl the straw around the chopstick with the other hand. Press it to maintain its corkscrew shape before releasing the twirled straw as pasta. Make enough pasta from the paper straws to fill a small bowl.

Making the pizza

1. Cut wedges from the foam tray. Paint them in mustard yellow or yellow ochre. Dab a darker shade onto the curved rim, just like the more browned rim of a real pizza crust.

2. Cut the synthetic wine cork into slices crosswise. Then cut them into smaller bits and glue them randomly onto a wedge, as chicken meat.

3. Cut out shapes from the foam tray and paint them in yellow, as pineapple. Cut smaller bits and paint them red, as tomato. Glue them in between the chicken meat to make the chicken pizza.

4. Cut the other wine cork into slices crosswise. Paint the side of each slice, reddish brown.

Also paint a thin outline on the top by the rim, to complete making the beef sausage. Glue them onto a wedge.

5. Cut out strips from the foam tray and trim them into thinner strips.

Paint a few red, and the others green, as peppers. Glue them in between the beef sausage to make the pepperoni beef pizza.