ColorFood Pi Day

Pi (3.14) Day incidentally happens to be Daylight Savings Day which means an hour less or adjusted that was my inspiration to get my son out of bed sooner. Thinking of surprising him with something 'special' and unique about today, I creatively thought of this idea in getting things ready for this 'Pi Day Challenge'.

This is a simple project and with little care you could have all the fun. A good idea for kids to understand Pi and enjoy some hands on culinary techniques. Let's get started.

1. Cooked or leftover white rice

2. Fresh Broccoli (A small floret)

3. Fresh Carrot (1 medium sized)

4. Fresh Green beans (12-15 in numbers)

5. Fresh Beet root (1 medium sized)

6. Knife for cutting

7. 2 plates (1 for the actual decoration/serving and 1 for saving the cut vegetables)

8. 1 small spoon and 1 fork

I washed all the vegetables and pat dried before getting started.

This is the only crucial step in this project. Here I made sure to keep beetroot aside and it leaves red stains and everywhere you touch it becomes hard to clean. I started with cutting the carrot into thin small pieces (like squares). Then I took the beans and cut these into small pieces. Later I cut the beetroots into small pieces just as the carrot. Lastly I plucked small florets with Broccoli. All these is collected and shown in image 2. Then, I also brought together the cooked white rice at room temperature. Getting ready for the next step.

This is a simple step, but needs slight attention and patience. To get started, I decided to kick-off with the top horizontal bar of the Pi (symbol). I first picked up the broccoli florets to start from left to the right as seen in image 1. Then added few cubes of carrot with a spoon, to that I added beet and then beans and continued with the carrots, beet and broccoli. By now I had the horizontal line ready (image 3). Every new vegetable had to be picked up carefully and to the line to make sure nothing spills or spoils the white plate underneath. At times I adjusted the cut vegetables with the help of a fork to stay within the boundaries.

With this ready and looking cool, I then decided to go to the left leg of the Pi symbol (I'm calling it the leg. Not sure if that's how its called officially :-)) I then attached some beans to the horizontal top line (image 4). Appended with carrots, beets, broccoli, carrots and beans. I made sure to slightly tilt this just as it actually is. With this I have completed the left leg as well (see image 7).

Later I decided to create the right leg of the Pi symbol. For this I started with the small broccoli florets, beets, beans, carrots and beats. Here I took care to twist this right slightly and that's how its depicted in the image 11. With this the Pi is finally ready.

Now this is a fairly simple yet careful step. I chose rice at room temperature. With the help of a spoon. I picked rice in small quantities and started adding on the plate. Little by little, I spread the rice all over the plate making sure not to drop even a single grain the Pi arranged vegetables. As the plate started filling up with the rice, the colorful and color food vegetables were appearing attractive. Finally, the plate was ready with Pi and the rice gracefully surrounding the protecting the cute vegetables :-)

Major task done.

As I was working on this and arranging the rice around the colorful Pi, I just had an idea to create a colorful border as well. With this thought, I decided to have a thin border to uplift the looks of this image. Finally I carefully added small amounts of carrots, beans and beets in the circular borders. Slowly I filled up the outline and finally the plate was ready as visible in the final image 4 above.

Finally when my son woke up, he was surprised to see the vegetables arranged in a fashionable and creative way to help him realize it is 3.14 today which is nothing but Pi Day :-)

How did you celebrate your Pi Day?