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Food Talk chronicles culinary highlights

Armed with craft supplies, writing utensils and fond food memories, attendants at Saturday’s “Kitchen Diaries” event, the third in a series of four Food Talks held at Cafe Bernardo, set about creating their own “cookbook journals:” keepsakes meant to preserve and honor the recipes and culinary experiences that shape us.

Author and writing coach Janice Kelley, along with illustrator and art instructor Joy Gee, guided the group through the writing and crafting process.

Kelley began the workshop by engaging participants in a writing exercise meant to stimulate their creative writing skills as well as their memories.

“One of my favorite things to do is help people tell their stories,” Kelley said.

She suggested getting started by asking yourself questions like: “What does my favorite food smell like?” and “How did I learn to make a certain dish?” She said these sorts of prompts can function as “triggers” for the writing process, often acting as the catalyst for a string of memories or details that will eventually evolve into a full story.

Kelley described the way that a memory of her mother’s strudel was once able to spark the writing process for her.

“That memory helped me tell the story through (my mom’s) eyes and eventually became a book,” she said.

After a 15-minute free-write, participants shared their own food memories with the group.

The exercise prompted SacPress contributor Bill Burgua to recall the “cookie factory” his mother and aunt used to create in the kitchen every year at Christmastime. He remembered that the women’s tempting sweets, like the labor-intensive rosette cookie, formed with a snowflake-shaped iron, deep-fried until crispy and dusted with powdered sugar, covered every inch of available kitchen space.

The torturous catch, Burgua said, was that no one could touch the treats until Christmas Eve.

Gee described the way she and her siblings used to help her mother with the time-consuming task of crafting Chinese tamales, filling them carefully with ingredients like peanuts, Chinese sausage, sweet rice and eggs.

Food Talk regular Larry Fox reminisced about his grandma’s peak-perfect lemon meringue pie, made with Sunkist lemons and the hand of a culinary perfectionist.

“(The pie) had to be perfect because that’s what the food deserved,” he said.

During the hands-on portion of the workshop, participants were exposed to a variety of do-it-yourself book forms, including the “accordion” book that unfolds to reveal its contents, and a book with hand-sewn binding.

Birthday Clip Art For Kids | Free Vector Art

Birthday Clip Art For Kids

Kids birthday parties have gotten more and more extravagant over the last few years, but perhaps those days are over, and probably that’s for the best. Times are tough now, with gas way over $4 and a trip to the supermarket requiring a trip to the bank before you go. We all need to watch our expenses, and your kids birthday company is no exception. But you can still have a marvelous celebration of this puerility milestone on a tightened budget. Kids astatine least through the pre-teen years of 11 and 12 aren’t impressed by what you spend; they just want to have a great time.

All of the components of a successful kids birthday company offer opportunities for savings: the invitations, the decorations, the paper goods, the food, the activities, the party favors. But the single most important factor in limiting your company expense without sacrificing the fun is your choice of venue.

Have your party astatine home, the old fashioned way. Choose games and activities that keep the kids engaged and focused, and they’ll do what you’ve planned rather than ransack your house. Limit the mess they might make to controllable substances- paper, craft supplies that can be easy vacuumed up. Keep the numbers down to a level that you can contain to only one or two rooms that will then need to be cleaned. A little forethought and it becomes quite manageable.

Create your own invitations and thank you notes on your computer. Use one of the many free clip art sources you can find on the web, or your Microsoft Word on-line clip art. Use a kid-friendly font for your text and some bright text colours for visual appeal. Do the same on your invitation gasbag to make it unlike and special. It doesn’t need to be professional job; it needs to get the kids excited about your child’s upcoming birthday party.

Party Decorations need to set the mood for fun, not cost a fortune. They’ll look astatine your decorations for about 30 seconds, and move on to the fun, so they can easily be limited to your entrance way. Use bunches of colorful balloons – blow them up yourself rather than paying for helium filled and tack them up with paint-friendly tack tape. Hang a happy birthday banner printed out one bright colored letter per page (or printed on colored construction paper and cut out), and tacked up on the wall. Make tissue paper flowers with your birthday girl for a nice together activity and use those for decorations. Decorate the birthday child’s chair for the cake and ice cream with curly ribbon to make a birthday throne. Put confetti on the table, or use flowers from the garden, colorful fall leaves or sprigs from evergreens.

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