Pasta Art

Last week I mentioned the brilliance of having pizza dough for the kids to play with during meal preparation, or while eating out. Why not try the same with some extra cooked pasta? Cooked pasta freezes well (and so does rice for that matter), so whenever I am cooking pasta, I almost always cook the entire box or pound of pasta, regardless of how much we need for that meal. It rarely makes it to the freezer since leftover pasta is a great way to get a quick lunch to the table, or can be transformed into an easy pasta salad for a different way to serve it. But it also can be fun entertainment for the kiddos too. Here’s R, growing his very own fruit flower garden, using some quickly dyed pasta (mix about a ¼ cup of pasta in a baggie with one drop of food dye and squish around until the color is absorbed by the pasta), strawberries, and spinach leaves: This entertained him far longer than I expected. Alas, my hope that perhaps in the middle of his creating he would be caught up in the moment and also eat the spinach, well, um, let’s just say he’s too smart for me. SPC