

I know this post may be a little late for you to try, but hey - I'm a mom and I'm running late! I had seen lots of mention of natural egg dyes and thought I'd give it a try this year. It was pretty fun! Below are the instructions from the Whole Foods website. Many sites had similar recipes. We tried using beets, red cabbage, tumeric and spinach. All worked well except for the spinach, which I think I just didn't use enough of. So I ended up cheating on the green and adding food dye.
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Making Natural Dyes
For 4 cups of dye, you'll need:
1 tablespoon of a spice or 4 cups of a chopped fruit or vegetable (see list below; adding more of these ingredients will give the dye a darker hue)
4 cups of water
2 tablespoons of white vinegar (to help the dye adhere to the eggs)
Combine the ingredients in a pot, and bring them to a boil, then reduce heat and let the mixture simmer for 15 to 30 minutes. The longer you allow the ingredients to simmer, the darker the color will become. If you choose to dye the eggs using the hot method, you can add raw eggs to the mixture while it's being prepared. If using the cold method, remove the dye from the heat, allow it to cool, then run it through a strainer. Dip your hardboiled eggs in the dye for at least 15 minutes—longer if you want a darker color. When finished, you can rub the eggs with vegetable oil to give them a soft sheen.
For a little variation, you can have kids decorate the eggs with crayons or wax pencils before boiling and dyeing them. Or, wrap a rubber band around the egg to create contrast, either on a white egg, to prevent coloring, or on a dry, dyed egg, where it will give you a stripe of the original color if it's redipped in another.
2 comments:
COOL site and photos! Found you over at Maya's mom. I love having a blog which pushes me to learn more and more about a particular thing, or just try out new things more often! I am learning all I can re: kids lunches and healthy choices on my newer blog: www.brownbagblues.com
I will keep an eye on your green journey!
We had a question about the natural egg dyeing; did the flavors of the foods get into the eggs at all? Does anyone make "natural" egg dyeing kits, like there are the natural food colors at Whole Foods?
No more Hello Kitty bubbles for us! Yikes!
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