Make your own paint/craft and cooking!

[fireheart]

Part One: paints.

So lately I've seen a lot of stuff coming up about making your own paint instead of having to buy some. Usually the recipe involves flour, salt and food dye or some combination thereof.

My question is, has anyone actually tried this and if so, does it work?! I'm thinking of bringing these up with work for reasons outlined in part 2. Also, how long does the paint last for and is there anything that can be done with it aside from y'know, painting?

Alternately, any other crafty activities that would be good to do with 5-13 year olds?


OK, part two: Cooking.

Lately work has sprung a little challenge on staff and students. The challenge is to find/make a recipe that uses the following ingredients:

-cocoa
-oats
-oil
-self-raising flour
-sugar
-jelly
-plain flour
-milk.
-fruit (we are provided with apples, pears, bananas, mandarins and lately oranges which I have no idea how to chop up without getting spat on )
-vegetables (red/green capsicum, carrots, cucumber and cherry tomatoes)

I suspect we are allowed to use butter as well based on something bosslady told me. We DO have a number of kids with nut/egg allergies which makes the snack choices somewhat bizarre (we provide anything from Doritos to noodles).

So does anyone have any recipes that use a combination of these ingredients? The encouragement is that the recipe needs to be egg/nut free at the bare minimum and possibly gluten-free.

[EricKei]

Part One: paints.

I read this as "pants" at first, then i realized, "Wait, this isn't a Gravekeeper post!"

oranges which I have no idea how to chop up without getting spat on )

Food processor or blender, methinks. Make smoothies or shakes with water/milk/ice/sugar added?

The encouragement is that the recipe needs to be egg/nut free at the bare minimum and possibly gluten-free.

If not for this: Apple wedges with peanut butter on them. I know peanuts aren't nuts, but most people don't make that distinction ~_~

[fireheart]

=
If not for this: Apple wedges with peanut butter on them. I know peanuts aren't nuts, but most people don't make that distinction ~_~

No peanut butter. Basically no peanut/nut products whatsoever (allergies)

[bhskittykatt]

I found a muffin recipe you may be able to adapt? http://www.yummly.com/recipe/Choice-...osition=6%2F36

[fireheart]

I'll give that one a try.

Alternately, if anyone can name suitable substitutes for eggs, milk and nut products, that would be great. I do have a list somewhere, but I lost it.

[bhskittykatt]

I just found this site: http://www.foodsubs.com/ It's called "Cook's Thesaurus" and it's basically different ingredient substitutions. Probably worth exploring.

[Seshat]

As soon as I saw the oats, my brain went 'ANZAC cookies'.

How about a layered thing:

ANZAC cookie-based base layer. Google the web for oat-based 'pie crusts' and other base-layers: there's a ton of them.

Jelly (Jello, to Americans) with fruit inside. (Note that acidic fruits will cause it not to set.) as the next layer up. If you want something savoury, use gelatin powder (or sheets) rather than flavoured jelly.

Sprinkled with cocoa. (but not if you make it savoury)

Served with a smoothie made with blended vegetables. Or see if you can find a custard-y recipe that doesn't include forbidden things, and use the milk and vegetables to make a custard-ish layer.

OOOH! Make the milk into cottage cheese (now there's a learning experience for the kids) and mix veggies into that, use it for the third layer.

Another option for the milk and vegetables is mashed veg; that'd form another layer for a pie-like thing. If you want it sweet, Americans do strange things to pumpkin or sweet potato to make a sweet pie filling for Thanksgiving; so hunt for those recipes.



That idea, of course, assumes that you MUST use ALL of the ingredients in the same recipe. If it's multiple different recipes, it becomes much, much easier!




As for the paints: flour-and-water-glue is common. Look up recipes for that online - it's basically cooking the flour in lots of water, and letting the flour have its chemical reaction that makes it glutinous. I suspect the paint is just flour-and-water-glue with dye.

If it is, then the paints would be ABSOLUTELY PERFECT for papier mache. I use f-and-w-glue for most of my papier mache craftwork as it is. Never thought to colour it. How stupid of me! It'd really deepen the colour of the final product.

[Kittish]

Plain flour, water, oil= tortillas (or other flatbread)!!! Steamed pureed veggies (+ pureed/mashed beans if you can get em)= Burritos!

You've also got the ingredients for no bake cookies, mostly. Oats, cocoa, sugar, milk, vanilla, butter. There are quite a few recipes for them that do not call for peanut butter. Bonus- these are gluten, egg, and nut free.

Just to double check, by jelly you mean gelatin? Not prepared fruit spread usually served on toast? Fruit and gelatin molds have already been mentioned. Hmm, not coming up with anything else there really.

You can make the milk into yogurt, and use it as a base for a savory dip with the veggies, or a sweet dip with the fruit.

[AccountingDrone]

If it is indeed fruit jelly [as in either preserves which is goo with fruit bits, comprised mainly of sugar and pectin or jelly proper which is the juice of fruit cooked down to a thick goo with sugar and pectin - both of which are vegan as the pectin that provides the gell is a vegetable product or provided by apples depending on your source] instead of gelatin you can cook it down into fruit leather sort of denseness and cut it into cubes after cooling it in thinish sheets, and using it to decorate the no cook bars suggested above.

Now classically, milk paints are the old school go to for craft painting - the whole country goose crap style of decorating [you know, colonial kitsch] Milk paint is what we made in this country before there were commercial paints, typically. It took the invention of cheap anilline dyes to make stuff like testers model paints. Milk paint used locally sourced minerals to tint the liquid, which was lime and milk [duh ] used so the proteins in the milk would act like the latex in the modern latex paints. It is actually very kid safe as when made properly the ingredients are nontoxic [as long as you are not allergic to the ingredients that is.] You can google for recipes, last time I helped my goddaughters make the stuff we found several pages of recipes, and suppliers for ground pigments. You can cheat and use the dried poster paint powder probably if you want.

[Seshat]

In Australia, we use the word 'jelly' to mean what Americans call 'jello'.

What you call jelly (fruit preserves, usually made with sugar and pectin), we call jam. Or fruit preserves!

[It's me]

In Australia, we use the word 'jelly' to mean what Americans call 'jello'.

What you call jelly (fruit preserves, usually made with sugar and pectin), we call jam. Or fruit preserves!

Same thing in

[It's me]

Same thing in

Gah! I miss edit!

Same thing in Canada...Jello is name brand flavoured gelantine, jelly is more generic. Although Jello is starting to also be used generically, despite efforts of the brand owner to convince us otherwise. And jelly is also thickened fruit juice, (jam with no solids) just to make things more confusing!

[dalesys]

Same thing in

Gah! I miss edit!

I thought the white space was just the standard Canadian snow cover...

[Aethian]

Jam - a preserve of whole fruit, slightly crushed, boiled with sugar: strawberry jam.

Jelly - a food preparation of a soft, elastic consistency due to the presence of gelatin, pectin, etc., especially fruit juice boiled down with sugar and used as a sweet spread for bread and toast, as a filling for cakes or doughnuts, etc.

[JPD]

I have tried one of the homemade watercolor paints, and found it didn't work. For the recipes I recommend this site http://www.supercook.com/