After running to the store, leaving my lights on, being rescued by Sam, and buying the needed dye, I arrived home, unloaded my packages and set to work. I didn’t have a recipe.
No problem, I thought, I did this so many times back in the day I can surely do it now. No measurements needed.
Oh were they needed.
On Sundays Lindsey and I enjoy letting the kids in our two-year old Sunday school class work with play-dough. The extremely controlling, overbearing teacher for the earlier class, however, insists that the children must play with home-made, “non- toxic” play-dough. She makes this play-dough at home, and God love her, it looks like vomit. It has a great texture and the kids love it, but every week the parents come in, sit down, hold up gopher-gut green mass of dough and ask “What IS this?”
I finally told a mother a few weeks ago I would make some more play dough and dye it colors that wouldn’t leave the children with a curious desire to use cookie cutters on their boogers.
“Here’s my question,” I said to Lindsey the other Sunday “Don’t you think the Play-Dough people or Crayola or whoever makes that crap, you know, makes sure that stuff isn’t toxic? Have there been any studies of children growing extra heads from Play-Dough?” I asked her and she shrugged.
“All I know is if “toxic” were a color—that’d be it,” She replied.
So it’s Saturday night and I decide to “whip up” a batch of home-made play-dough, as they say on cooking shows where everything is pre-sliced for you.
I dump the flour, corn starch, baking soda and water into a pot on the stove and let it begin boiling.
This is going to need salt, I think, and open the cupboard. Of course the canister of salt is in there, but it is empty. By now it’s too late to go back to store and I suddenly imagine that my project is no longer going to turn out like the perfectly non-toxic rolls of neon-colored dough. Pulling everything from the cupboard I nearly rip it apart with my frustrated frenetic energy. No luck.
Where can I get SALT? I thought to myself far more intensely than needed. For awhile I eyed the canister of Lemon Pepper.
No way I’m sifting out those granules of white salt tucked in there, I told myself, though it may become necessary.
Suddenly I remembered that sometimes we keep those packets of disposable knifes, forks and spoons that come with a napkin and salt and pepper packets in a drawer next to the stove. After digging through a pile of plastic knives and ketchup I found one….ONE…packet of salt.
After dumping that in I scraped the browning edges of the mass into a big, steaming pile in the middle of the pot. What had I done and how would it turn into play dough? Taking the mass and dumping its stickiness into my hand I poured the dye onto the dough. While my hands blistered from the heat and the dye ran in strands down into the creases of sludge, the back of my neck began to sweat. This was exhausting. It was taking too long. And the first ball:
It looked like a hot ball of snot.
Next I dyed the dough blue. Because I poured loads of corn starch on the stickiness it stopped clutching my hands and fingers. But the dyes were now soaking my fingers and veins turning my hands a hideous indiscernible color.
In my head I imagined the children playing with the balls of dough and dying themselves all sorts of colors.
“Oh, look, you got some colors on you!” would say a sweet little mother with her hair perfectly done. Then turning to me, “Is that washable crayola stuff?”
“Oh no,” I would say pleasantly with my face in a smile, “It’s neon egg dye. It should wash off in three to five weeks.”
To another parent:
“Oh don’t worry, your child is under there. You just need to scrub harder. But don’t worry—it’s not TOXIC!”
My last ball of dough required that I remove the bits of bread that had baked into the dough that didn’t need all the flour I dumped in there. In fact, I realized AFTER the fact, I don’t believe any flour at all was called for in the original recipe that I of course, did not have.
After the bread had been removed and the mud-like dough was in a ball shape I poured on the bright purple dye. With the hardened bits of dough and corn starch and pot-lining, the purple ball looked exactly like a wad of gum that had been stuck to the bottom of a table at a diner.
And the next day when the parents came in with the bright balls of dough decorating the table, they sat down, picked up the masses and asked “Oh, what IS this?”
No problem, I thought, I did this so many times back in the day I can surely do it now. No measurements needed.
Oh were they needed.
On Sundays Lindsey and I enjoy letting the kids in our two-year old Sunday school class work with play-dough. The extremely controlling, overbearing teacher for the earlier class, however, insists that the children must play with home-made, “non- toxic” play-dough. She makes this play-dough at home, and God love her, it looks like vomit. It has a great texture and the kids love it, but every week the parents come in, sit down, hold up gopher-gut green mass of dough and ask “What IS this?”
I finally told a mother a few weeks ago I would make some more play dough and dye it colors that wouldn’t leave the children with a curious desire to use cookie cutters on their boogers.
“Here’s my question,” I said to Lindsey the other Sunday “Don’t you think the Play-Dough people or Crayola or whoever makes that crap, you know, makes sure that stuff isn’t toxic? Have there been any studies of children growing extra heads from Play-Dough?” I asked her and she shrugged.
“All I know is if “toxic” were a color—that’d be it,” She replied.
So it’s Saturday night and I decide to “whip up” a batch of home-made play-dough, as they say on cooking shows where everything is pre-sliced for you.
I dump the flour, corn starch, baking soda and water into a pot on the stove and let it begin boiling.
This is going to need salt, I think, and open the cupboard. Of course the canister of salt is in there, but it is empty. By now it’s too late to go back to store and I suddenly imagine that my project is no longer going to turn out like the perfectly non-toxic rolls of neon-colored dough. Pulling everything from the cupboard I nearly rip it apart with my frustrated frenetic energy. No luck.
Where can I get SALT? I thought to myself far more intensely than needed. For awhile I eyed the canister of Lemon Pepper.
No way I’m sifting out those granules of white salt tucked in there, I told myself, though it may become necessary.
Suddenly I remembered that sometimes we keep those packets of disposable knifes, forks and spoons that come with a napkin and salt and pepper packets in a drawer next to the stove. After digging through a pile of plastic knives and ketchup I found one….ONE…packet of salt.
After dumping that in I scraped the browning edges of the mass into a big, steaming pile in the middle of the pot. What had I done and how would it turn into play dough? Taking the mass and dumping its stickiness into my hand I poured the dye onto the dough. While my hands blistered from the heat and the dye ran in strands down into the creases of sludge, the back of my neck began to sweat. This was exhausting. It was taking too long. And the first ball:
It looked like a hot ball of snot.
Next I dyed the dough blue. Because I poured loads of corn starch on the stickiness it stopped clutching my hands and fingers. But the dyes were now soaking my fingers and veins turning my hands a hideous indiscernible color.
In my head I imagined the children playing with the balls of dough and dying themselves all sorts of colors.
“Oh, look, you got some colors on you!” would say a sweet little mother with her hair perfectly done. Then turning to me, “Is that washable crayola stuff?”
“Oh no,” I would say pleasantly with my face in a smile, “It’s neon egg dye. It should wash off in three to five weeks.”
To another parent:
“Oh don’t worry, your child is under there. You just need to scrub harder. But don’t worry—it’s not TOXIC!”
My last ball of dough required that I remove the bits of bread that had baked into the dough that didn’t need all the flour I dumped in there. In fact, I realized AFTER the fact, I don’t believe any flour at all was called for in the original recipe that I of course, did not have.
After the bread had been removed and the mud-like dough was in a ball shape I poured on the bright purple dye. With the hardened bits of dough and corn starch and pot-lining, the purple ball looked exactly like a wad of gum that had been stuck to the bottom of a table at a diner.
And the next day when the parents came in with the bright balls of dough decorating the table, they sat down, picked up the masses and asked “Oh, what IS this?”
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