Happy Easter!
Happy (belated) Easter everyone!
Being away from home for yet another holiday, I chose to spend part of my day doing what I loved to do when I was a kid: decorate Easter eggs.
I did this last year with my roommate using flowers, nylons and onion peels. Sound weird? I can promise you the results were amazing:
This year I wanted to do something a little bit different. So instead of using onion peels, I used 7 different all natural food dyes. Not all of them worked amazingly well, but it was a fun experiment in natural egg coloring.
Check 'em out...
From left to right:
* cranberries + strawberries
* some tea from Trader Joes called Red rooibos.
* grated carrots + few pieces canteloupe
* turmeric
* zaatar + basil (I'd read spinach can work, but I didn't have any so tried basil instead)
* blueberries
* paprika
For all of them I basically just boiled the ingredient in ~1+ cups water, let it steep for 15+ minutes, and added ~ 1 TBSP worth of vinegar. Poured the liquid into glasses and added my pre-hard boiled eggs.
So how did they turn out?? Well, after ~20+ minutes, here are the results.
Meh, not bad. But not super great either. Of all of the eggs the zaatar/basil one was the worst, with almost no color (so I didn't include it in the picture below). Most of the rest got a very pale pastel color. The three brightest (last three eggs shown below) were the turmeric (yellow), blueberries (bluish purple) and paprika (a reddish brown)
I think they could have been a lot brighter had I done what I did last year: boil the eggs IN the colored liquid. This time the eggs were simply placed in the liquid and allowed to sit for a while. So I'm guessing less heat = less color.
After that mini-experiment I wanted to repeat what I'd done last year, using flowers for patterns. Instead of nylon this year I had to use some tulle I had laying around (no nylons) and it worked pretty well, although probably not quite as well as nylons. For the full instructions, check out last years post. Today I just provide you with some pretty pictures.
Sometimes the eggs pre-coloring look prettier than post-coloring.
Being away from home for yet another holiday, I chose to spend part of my day doing what I loved to do when I was a kid: decorate Easter eggs.
I did this last year with my roommate using flowers, nylons and onion peels. Sound weird? I can promise you the results were amazing:
From left to right:
* cranberries + strawberries
* some tea from Trader Joes called Red rooibos.
* grated carrots + few pieces canteloupe
* turmeric
* zaatar + basil (I'd read spinach can work, but I didn't have any so tried basil instead)
* blueberries
* paprika
For all of them I basically just boiled the ingredient in ~1+ cups water, let it steep for 15+ minutes, and added ~ 1 TBSP worth of vinegar. Poured the liquid into glasses and added my pre-hard boiled eggs.
So how did they turn out?? Well, after ~20+ minutes, here are the results.
Meh, not bad. But not super great either. Of all of the eggs the zaatar/basil one was the worst, with almost no color (so I didn't include it in the picture below). Most of the rest got a very pale pastel color. The three brightest (last three eggs shown below) were the turmeric (yellow), blueberries (bluish purple) and paprika (a reddish brown)
I think they could have been a lot brighter had I done what I did last year: boil the eggs IN the colored liquid. This time the eggs were simply placed in the liquid and allowed to sit for a while. So I'm guessing less heat = less color.
After that mini-experiment I wanted to repeat what I'd done last year, using flowers for patterns. Instead of nylon this year I had to use some tulle I had laying around (no nylons) and it worked pretty well, although probably not quite as well as nylons. For the full instructions, check out last years post. Today I just provide you with some pretty pictures.
Sometimes the eggs pre-coloring look prettier than post-coloring.
Taking a little swimmy swim in the blueberry juice
Some of my favorite eggs (yes, I play favorites.) The turmeric and paprika eggs at right. And it's amazing: all four eggs on the left were put in the blueberry liquid, some in the same container for the same amount of time. But all of them came out a little differently. Weird.
The egg at front was my favorite. [It's the same egg in the pre-color flower picture shown above (at left)]
Hopefully soon I'll actually get to celebrate a big holiday with my family. I'm counting down the days until my next trip home to Chicago (just over a month). I haven't been home in over 6 months- that's a record breaker for me!
Happy holidays and family days everyone.
Buen Provecho,
Jackie
LOVE the eggs!!
ReplyDeleteHope we can get together when you're in town :)