Edible food colors for kiddo finger painting sessions

Often times, we want kids to play with finger paints but we don’t want them to eat the paint. Know what I mean? Besides I noticed that food grade colors purchased at baking stores  stain my kids fingers, clothes and everywhere else like mad.  Not only do I not want  artificial coloring away from my children’s mouths, body and stuff, just think how a Barney the Purple Dinosaur color will look stuck all over a 2 year old for a couple of hours? How would you explain that to people who stare?

So, what to do?

Make our own, with food.

One lady in a forum I’m a member of says she gives her kids the pulp of vegetable after juicing. That’s a really great recycling idea. And good for the environment too.

I make my own colors.

First, I make a simple glue paste by cooking corn starch and water. You can use other types of flour like arrowroot or rice starch (not plain rice flour) if you are allergic to corn.

Then, I add vegetable juices as coloring. Spinach is green. Carrots is orange. Beet is red. I live in Malaysia now, and they have this beautiful edible bright blue flower which we use as safe blue coloring.  You can easily google for other vegetable color choices.

It’s not Play-Doh, but it’s equally fun. It was what my mum made for me and my brothers to finger paint on paper when we were in preschool, way back then.

My kids splashing about, out in the sunshine after a particularly fun but dirty episode.
Mummy doesn’t want them in until they are nice and clean.

I just hate cleaning up after my kids, especially when they dirty up the living room, so what I do is strip them down and let them go wild in the bathroom with the colored pastes. I let them finger paint the tiled walls to their hearts content. Inevitably, everything gets colored. Hair, body, everything. *horrors*  When it’s time to come out, I just hose my kids and wash them. Meanwhile, I’d grab a sponge and wash the bathroom as I go ( a perfect excuse to clean the bathroom, ya know). My mum used to let us out of the house. She’d set up a large table and place some large papers on the tables for us to finger paint. I can’t remember, but we probably were washed outside before we were allowed to walk into the house, clean!

Filed under: Cooking • Environmental Issues • General • Green • Health • raw food

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