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As you might suspect from my posts about Passover, I am Jewish.  So what am I doing talking about dyeing Easter Eggs?  We simply couldn’t help ourselves!  We have eggs on the brain…Our young adult bantam chickens should start laying their tiny eggs any time now. Plus, we enjoy every opportunity we can get to play with our food. 

I have seen several blog posts recently about using natural ingredients to dye eggs, instead of purchasing kits full of artificial chemicals.  Since I am trying to watch our budget, it was a win-win situation.  I could use ingredients that we had on hand and I could keep our hard boiled eggs safely edible.  An extra bonus came from the fact that my daughter could interact with some ingredients that she usually doesn’t enjoy.  Since it often takes 15-20 exposures to a new food before it is accepted, playing with food in a constructive fashion is an excellent way to help our kids get used to it.

I rummaged through the colorful items I had in the kitchen and set to work.  On the stove, I put 3 pots a-simmer.  One pot contained water, red onion peels and some chili powder.  A second contained water with 3 Tbs. of tumeric.  And the third contained water, frozen spinach and frozen blueberries.  I figured that with these ingredients, I might end up with something that looked yellowish, reddish and purplish.  I simply strained them into bowls and added a bit of white vinegar to help the colors bind to the eggs.  What do you know – Mission Accomplished!

When our friends arrived early for our Passover Seder, I set the kids up at a table covered with a splashmat and put them to work.  A few of the kids tried to wrap the eggs with rubber bands before dipping them into the colors, hoping that they would end up with stripes.  But some of the rubber bands didn’t fit well and slid off.  The kids were discouraged at first to find that the color didn’t adhere to the eggs as well as they would have liked.  So we decided to let the eggs sit in the colored solutions through dinner and then take a look.

While the results were more muted than their commercial counterparts, we had a great time and loved using real food to dye our eggs.  This was an excellent activity that allowed us to play with our food – both in the creation of the dyes and with the eggs, themselves.  They were delicious, too!

Oooh, look what I found – more ways to play with your food, and learn some science at the same time!