Bunchland

Spaghetti with Eyeballs Photo by Eric Staudenmaier from The Secret Life of Food by Clare Crespo

We’ve all got bins full of markers and drawers full of glue but one of the most fun art supplies is sitting neglected in your kitchen cupboard. Making crazy looking stuff out of food is wickedly fun. Today, we’ve got the world’s foremost expert on wacky food art standing by to inspire you and your crew to make monkey pops or jello aquariums. Clare Crespo is an art school grad who once played in a band with Beck and made experimental animated videos but now she gets her creative expression out by cooking things like spaghetti with eyeballs. Photos of her whimsical food projects are packed into her two books, The Secret Life of Food and Hey There, Cupcake! She’s also filmed three episodes of a completely mental cooking show in her garage, the YummyFun Kooking show (think Pee-Wee’s Playhouse, but with recipes), preparing candy bugs and monster heads and making time for dance breaks with the show’s house band, The Tastebuds.

We interviewed Clare about how she cooks with her own kid, the very lucky Ruby, and we’re also going to share her remarkably easy recipe for making candy bugs and issue a challenge to you guys that comes with a very sweet reward. Read on!

 

Clare’s Ridiculously Easy Recipe for Candy Bugs

Ingredients:

4 Tbs. evaporated milk
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
4-1/2 cups powdered sugar
assorted candies and nuts

Preparation:

Combine all ingredients in a large bowl until they form a compact, pliable dough. Pinch off a small amount of dough and shape a bug’s body. Decorate with candies. Use a “glue” to attach garnishes made from a little powdered sugar and water.

 

A Dare from Bunchland and Clare

Raid the pantry and the fridge and just go nuts and make something, even if it’s just a big old mess. But do it the Clare Crespo way: you’re not trying to make something perfect or too precious, you’re simply trying to have the funnest experience possible with food. Snap a pic of your wondrous creation and email it to us. The three entries that make us smile the widest will get a copy of a YummyFun Kooking DVD, courtesy of Crespo herself. Email your photos to amanda@bunchfamily.ca

 

Bunchland’s Exclusive Interview with Clare Crespo

What are some ways you share your love of food with your daughter? Do you make things together?

Ruby has been sitting on the kitchen counter helping me and “cooking” since she could sit on the counter! Now that she is 5 she offers her opinions and comments on recipes I am working on for The YummyFun Kooking Club and other jobs. I recently wrote a recipe for Sweet Earthworms and she corrected me when I put mini-chocolate chips on as eyes. “Earthworms don’t have eyes, mom.” I put this note in the recipe. Ha! It’s so fun to be able to “work” with her!

A jello aquarium

Well it depends on what recipes you are referring to. I think there is a place in the world for treats, so I wrote a cupcake book! I think treats have their place in celebrating for sure, but I also think that  making a sweet treat into a creative project might keep the mindless ingestion of junk food at bay a bit. I don’t write sweet recipes for kids to eat as snacks while watching TV. I suggest flipped out recipes to be a sort of centerpiece at a celebration. I am a healthy eater. I have an organic garden and am a vegetarian, and I feed my family in a healthy way. But there is room for everything in moderation, and I will not judge you if you eat meat or can’t cook every night. With The Kooking Club, I write very healthy recipes. Lots of fresh seasonal vegetables, and no processed foods. And in The YummyFun Kooking Series I only have two sweet recipes total in all of the episodes. But yeah, I am known for the cupcakes. That’s OK. I want to be a cupcake anyway.

We fantasize about what it’s like to be fed by you on a daily basis. What sorts of foods do you serve your daughter? Does she get Potato Flip Flops for dinner?

Ha! Come on over and let me “kook” for you! most of my recipes are really just adding one little move to make it funny. The Potato Flip Flops are cooking green beans and potatoes in an easy way. Its just the assembly that makes them funny. So, yes, my daughter has had Potato Flip Flops as a side. I like the process of cooking with my
daughter though. And when we make something fun, we have a lot of laughs together.

I have wanted to open a bakery for many years now. But whenever I meet with folks about it seriously, it doesn’t sound that fun (waking up at 4am, baking the same thing every day, selling enough cookies to pay the rent, etc.) I have a few good friends who also fantasized about having a bakery so we just decided to have a bakery on our terms! Treat Street!  We are open when we want to be open. We bake whatever we want. No rent! It is SO FUN. Its like “playing bakery” and it seems to make people so
happy to find us on the street. It is like the best party!

Treat Street is a secret roving bakery. Sometimes bears show up.

The Tastebuds! My favorite band ever!! The leader of the band is John Gold. http://www.johngoldmusic.com/ I was a huge fan of his before the show. He wrote all the music and I think it is so so great. He has a few fantastic CDs out, but so far there isn’t a Tastebuds CD out…YET. The woman in the band is Rosey http://www.roseymusic.com/. Her voice is amazing! She has a lot of tiny fans now! And the drummer in the show is my good friend Casey Storm who is a costume designer on amazing movies.

This Bunch