Gettin Crafty

Did you know that the average restaurant steak dinner is FOUR servings of pasta? One of the biggest problems in the average American diet is portion control. I know until recently I had very little knowledge of what an actual serving size of most foods physically looked like. Lets face it, it's not easy to control portion  in a society where bigger is better including food portions. One of the best things you can do nutritionally is control your portion sizes. In the weight loss reading that I've been doing several give several tips on general visual cues for serving sizes.  For instance,  a serving of protein is about the size and volume of a deck of cards, grains such as pasta and rice should be about the size and volume of a tennis ball, Veggies should take up half your plate and about the size and volume of two tennis balls.

All this talk of Portion Control lead me to find Portion Control plates that have the visual cues printed on your plate as a reminders. Which is great and  I wanted one, but most were kind of ugly and expensive, so I decided to make my own. I’m not very artistically talented when comes to painting, but I wanted to make a plate with the visual reminders, without the plate screaming “I’m on a diet”. So here is what I did.

Supplies:
Clear Glass Plate ( I bought one at goodwill for .99)
Dishwasher safe glass paint (available at Michaels)
Tennis Ball
Playing Card
Imagination (not necessary, but helpful)





1.    Clean plate and dry thoroughly
2.    On the front of the plate tape the playing card, and trace a circle around the tennis ball using non-toxic washable marker, divide plate in half.
3.    Flip your plate over and paint your design. You want to paint on the back of the plate, because while I found dishwasher safe paint, none of it was guaranteed to be food safe.
4.    Let dry following the paint instructions, for example mine said not to wash for 10 days. Some of the paint I found also require Curing time in the oven.

So here is the final product pretty cute! I think I'm going to do another that's more abstract.