Angry Bird and Other Rice Balls

It's fun to play around in the kitchen while having fun with your kids. You can make faces on crackers, pancakes, or other foods, by using assorted vegetables, cheeses, and other goodies, as the features. But when we have guests over for dinner we don't seem to be so creative. We might serve dishes with ingredients no one has heard of, or scrumptious meals with all the fixings, but we don't necessarily try to make these foods look like anything in particular. If you're planning on serving rice you can do it in the cutest manner. Make angry birds or other characters by using bits and pieces of things you likely have already.

Cook rice as you normally would but allow it to cook just a couple of extra minutes, so it will be slightly sticky. When it's cool enough to touch, mold a ball of white rice. The ball should be about as large around as the bottom of a 20oz soda bottle. Place this ball on a serving plate.

Mix enough ketchup or red food coloring with another bowl of rice to tint it red. Form it into a ball equal in size to the original ball. Press the two balls together so that they stick. Give the top ball of rice some features like a carrot beak or olive slice eyes. Get as creative as you want, using bean sprouts to make hair or feathers, carrot shavings for hair or feathers, olive slices to make eyes, cheese slivers for beaks or hair, and other foods for additional features.

You can make rice ball frogs using green food coloring, baby birds by using yellow or other colors, and many more animals or people. Besides food coloring or ketchup, other things you can use to tint the rice include guacamole, mustard, or even tomato sauce. Use things from your cupboards or fridge to give each rice ball character his or her features.

You don't absolutely have to make the characters using white rice. You can use yellow rice, or brown types, to make additional characters. Serve the characters with cubes of meat and vegetables around them, or just serve it with sauces or dips that can be stirred into the rice while eating it.

Whether you're serving the rice ball characters to your own family, or to a group of your friends, you'll get a smile from each of them when they see the adorable characters. But sadly, they won't stay around for long.