The kids' Grammy was in town recently and like most of her visits, this meant the craft bin would be restocked with some type of to-do project. I always know when a crafty activity is about to take place when my mom begins to pull random objects out of her bag like Mary Poppins. The project for this weekend was pasta coloring.
I’m pretty sure the last time I colored food was over two years ago so we were in major need of a pasta rainbow growing on our counter top.
[Few things are as nice to look at as a beaming pasta rainbow]
A couple weeks after the visit from Grammy we pulled out the multi-colored pasta and enjoyed a make with the neighborhood children. To stay true to the season, we made “noodle ice cream.” To do this we needed white round cardstock circles to mimic scoops of ice cream (I used a 2 inch circle paper punch), brown triangle shapes to mimic ice cream cones (cut with scissors from craft paper), white school glue, cardstock folded into cards to glue our creations to and of course the colored noodles to symbolize various flavors of ice cream.
The older kids had fun inventing their own new ice cream flavors and some of the little ones had fun digging their little mitts into the noodles while mixing colors.
Yum! The final creations looked good enough to eat; we didn’t however, the combination of paper, glue and rubbing alcohol was sweet on the eyes but probably not so much on the tummy.
To color your own pasta or rice you will need:
Uncooked pasta or rice
Rubbing alcohol
Food coloring
Zip lock bags and
Paper towels or old rags
Fill zip lock bags with rubbing alcohol and food coloring, one bag per color of course. (The amount of rubbing alcohol you add will depend on how much pasta/rice you are coloring. I like the liquid to just cover the solid, the solid will soak up much of the alcohol while it’s “marinating” if you use this technique.)
After giving the filled bag a good shaking you may decide to add more coloring if you want a more saturated look (especially with the purple if you are coloring yellow pasta). After shaking the noodles around for a bit, let them soak in the liquid while moving on to your next color. When your pasta is reaching the desired color, lay the pasta flat on your rags or paper towels to dry.
Drying time typically takes a few hours. Once the (now inedible) food is completely dry you can begin a colorful pasta collage or bag it up for the next rainy day.