Easter Eggs

I have a confession...

I am a hypocrite.

Yes, you are probably thinking, "what's new? You just figured that out??"


No.


But its times like these that I remember that I am one.

Take today (April 4th) for example. My son has seen all the propaganda for Easter and keeps talking about "coloring Easter eggs".

No problem, right?!


Wrong.

You see, here's another confession...

I've always been grossed out by eating colored eggs.

Yeah, Sam I Am would not be too pleased with me. He'd probably chase me around with a mouse and a fox and ask me to eat them in a house or a box.

So the thought of making them in our house was kind of repulsing. And messy. And we won't even get into the dyes red-40, yellow-5 and the like, and their health controversies.

Which leads me back to my first confession... although I gave my mother-in-law a hard time about putting red hots in her applesauce, I readily will still use a few drops in a good sugar cookie icing.


Sorry, Beth.


Whew, I'm glad I got that off my chest.

Anyways, I thought to myself that there had to be another way, and two secnarios reminded me of it...

1. Cooking beets.
2. My son leaving restaurant crayons in the back seat floor of a 90+ Tampa day...

I figured I'd have to google it when, voila, in my email inbox, Kimi was nice enough to try it for me!

And since I had most ingredients on hand (and Publix is only a 15min walk away), Liam and I did the food version... I think there's less of a chance for him to want to try it alone, then if I were to have attempted it with crayons.

Getting to eat pickled beets and cabbage was just an added bonus. I felt so green, not that that was what I was going for. But it feels good to know that I didn't waste anything. :)

And I guess since I'm a grownup and have to eat about everything now to be a good example, at least I know that it is somewhat natural.

So here's to colored eggs, a tradition that I'm not too fond of keeping.


It truly was pretty simple. But to get the rich red and blue, I did have to wait overnight for the deep hues. We tried purple, that didn't come out too well. The splotchy blue was the result of wrapping one of the eggs in cabbage leaves and then placing it in the dye. I didn't have any fern-y herbs on hand (rosemary or dill I'm sure would have looked pretty) so I used celery leaves and rice. And although I didn't have a cheesecloth, I did find an unopened package of surgical bandaid/gauze material... Worked like a charm :)

Onion Skin Eggs

 Red Cabbage (1/2 a small cabbage, 4 c water, 3 T vinegar, 1/2 T salt boiled 30 min)

Beets (1 bunch/4 med beets, 4c water, 3T vinegar, 1/2T salt boiled 30min)

(The three yellow/orange ones are from the onion skins. The "Liam" one in the front was the egg that had been in the dye a couple of hours. The blotchy blue was a 4hr cabbage-wrapped bath. The bottom one was in the beet dye 30min. The darkest hue ones were left overnight.)

You can make a deeper hue of yellow ones with turmeric, but I didn't have it on hand and didn't see a need to buy it. Green can be obtained from spinach or kale concentrates or chlorophyll.