Confessions of a Cookie Baker: Food Coloring

If you have been following me for a while, you might know that I am a very "Type-A" in certain areas of my life.  I find it a little odd that I am upset when the washcloths are not folded correctly, but will let my desk stack up with junk until it looks like Mount Everest.  "Interesting" is how my Grandma Schalekamp would describe it. She always said things were "Interesting" when she could not find something nice to say about them.

So here it is.. one of my "cookie idols" Georganne at LilaLoa, just posted a fascinating post about her food coloring collection.

Georganne's Food Color Collection

It made me realize that my collection is a lot like me, colorful, mostly organized, and little stuffy. 

My "Interesting" Food Color Collection

I have two Ziploc boxes (because they fit, stacked on my upper cabinet shelf and they hold the colors standing upright, so I can quickly find the ones I want.)... one for my "Good" food coloring and edible markers, and one for everything else.  (I am too frugal to toss the old food dyes, even though I will probably never use them.  I feel the same way, about the huge bottle of green food coloring that I inherited from my grandmother who passed away more than a decade ago.)  The boxes are different colors, so I know exactly which one I am getting.  I keep a copy of Sugarbelle's color mixing chart in my "Good" box, so I don't have to look it up every time I need to make a funny new color like "Avocado."  And although, you probably can't tell from the photo, the Wilton colors are organized by shade, with the oldest (needing to be used first) on top, and the Americolor are organized by sets, the student set, the baby color set, etc. in the order that I purchased them, which means nothing to anyone except me. (And probably explains why my husband has a hard time putting my spatula collection in the correct places... hmmm.)

It made me wonder if Georganne's cookies are so amazing, because she really is an artist.  Her colors look like artist's colors.  My colors look like maybe I should have been a grocery store stocker or worked at a library (with a really complex catgorizing system that doesn't make sense to anyone).

So there you have it.

Food Coloring... who knew you were so "interesting."

Sarah