ChopStick Challenge

We have to work
 for our food?

Howdy

I think this is a common theme with all teen programs, you put out a lovely spread of snacks and your often mild mannered young adult patrons turn into a swarm of locusts.  Less then a minute later the food is gone and sometimes so are your program participants.  Now who is going to stay and watch Dragon Ball Z with you?  

I have been encouraging my teens to play with their food. This seems to slow down the gobbling just a bit. I got on Pinterest and looked for any sort of food activity that they could geek and eat. 

Dig in.

Last month I made bowls of trail mix that contained cereal (rice chex and fruit loops), marshmallows (it was going to just be the mini mallows but we found some giant campfire sized marshmallows so I added those too), and jelly beans.  OK its not your momma's trail mix but my teens liked the combo. The idea was to have three foods that were various skill levels on the chop stick scale; easy - marshmallows, medium - cereal, and hard - jelly beans. So instead of providing plates for them to use while shoveling in the food, I handed everyone a pair of chop sticks and a cup.  They had to serve themselves with the chop sticks and then they could eat from the cup.  You still have to watch for double dipping but mostly we only had a few near misses.  Surprisingly my teens didn't roll their eyes or wait for me to finally hand out plates or just dig in with their hands; they quietly dove in and laughed and dropped food and generally had a good time.  And I had leftovers, can you believe it?

But we still get soda, right?

For me the hardest part of this activity was getting the chopsticks.  Yes I can steal a pair or two at a time from the sushi guy at the grocery store.  I wanted a nice supply since I plan on  serving  ramen as a summer reading treat.  I couldn't seem to find chopsticks at the supermarket in with plastic utensils. At some point I even called GFS (Gordon Food Services) who carry a lot of catering supplies.  I was told it was a seasonal item. Because Chinese or Thai food is only eaten in the summer?  No idea what that means.  My coworkers were nice enough to start bringing in their chopsticks and now I have a nice stock of utensils at my desk.  Along with many other incongruous things.  We will  definitely do this activity again.  

Now if only I knew what we were doing at Anime this week? um help. 

Laura

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