*They're easy. They're silly. They're healthy. They're clever. They're
artistic. They're delicious. They're fun. They're a great way to start
the day. One breakfast at a time, Bill and Claire Wurtzel are determined
to make you laugh and eat and play and laugh some more. Riffing over the
years with oatmeal, eggs, apples, and nuts, it is finally ours to
share...*Funny Food!
Not since Joost Elffers' Play With Your Food has food been so
ridiculous and so endlessly diverting. Parents and children will giggle
through breakfast. Teachers and students can laugh some more making
snacks or desserts after lunch. This is a book filled with nothing but
engaging spontaneity and simplicity that makes you say, "I can do that."
And, you can...the consequences are yummy.
Really, who doesn't like to play with food? Bill Wurtzel, a jazz
guitarist, has been making these plates for his wife, Claire, for as
many years as they've been married. Now they are turning a hobby into an
art form with a social message. Their goal is to discourage obesity by
inspiring children--and adults--to improve their eating habits by
creating meals and snacks that are not only nutritious, but fun.
These are not your mother's smiley-face sandwiches. In Bill's world,
carrots turn into airplanes; boiled eggs into jugglers, and pears into
guitar players. As gracefully as Picasso's ceramic plates found endless
form so do Wurtzel's portraits, which seem to grow out of almost
anything--cheerios and bananas; lox and bagels; oatmeal, blueberries,
and strawberries. Sometimes you think he is portrait artist and you
could swear you just saw Sigmund Freud emerging from a pear or
Shakespeare growing out of an apple. Sometimes the plates are just plain
fanciful. "Your breakfasts don't have to look like they'll hang in the
Louvre," he says. "It's the gesture that counts." But it sure looks like
he riffed on Matisse's paper cutout dancers with a papaya.
In addition to creating Funny Food - which contains both recipes and
how-to photographs - Bill and Claire have been conducting workshops for
children at Public School 188 on the Lower East Side of New York,
teaching them to use their imaginations to improve their health "rather
than just putting lettuce and vegetables on their trays."
