Happy Easter

 

Wishing a lovely holiday to everyone who celebrates!

Cheers,

Aspasia

Dye! Dye! Dye! The Perils of All-natural Easter Egg Colours

When I was young I used to love dyeing eggs. Every year it would be a huge production, resulting in masses of vividly coloured springtime fertility symbols. Fast forward a couple of decades and things aren't what they used to be. Holidays aren't as big of a deal anymore, in part because there are fewer of us than there used to be. I still love dyeing eggs, although I've had to scale way back. Where my mom and I used to colour dozens of eggs, this year I had to limit myself to 18 eggs total--and I only used that many because I wanted to get a good variety of colours.

That was a mistake.

The last few years I've been experimenting with natural dyes. My theory was why use man-made chemicals when nature provides? Well, it turns out that sometimes nature kind of sucks. The colours are muddy. There's no shine. The flaws on the eggshells are emphasized. It's a lot of (stinky) work for disappointing results.

This year was extra disappointing because I'd had some high hopes for potential new colours. Besides the two natural colours I already knew worked (turmeric for yellow and red cabbage for blue), I decided to also try the supposedly proven suggestions from a blog that shall remain unnamed. I should have known that her information was crap when I saw the bright, smooth colours on her eggs--there was no way those came from natural dyes. But hindsight is 20/20 and I'm a trusting soul (why would anybody lie about their egg-dyeing methods?) who lives in hope. Based on her advice, I used spinach for green, grape juice for purple, and beets for pink. Do you see any green, purple, or pink eggs below?

The grape juice resulted in a weird blackish shade. The beets, although producing a gorgeous red liquid, tuned the eggs the colour of natural brown eggs. The spinach was so obviously useless I just ended up putting those eggs into the red cabbage liquid since I knew that would at least work. After a lot of boiling and soaking and draining and drying--and a huge mess--I ended up with 18 dull and patchy springtime fertility symbols.

The experimenting is over. Next year I'm going back to commercial dyes. I will have reds, greens, bright blues, yellows that won't have turmeric residue stuck to them. I'll be able to shine them with oil because the oil won't wipe the weak colour right off. It will be glorious and festive and might even inspire me to revive some of the other childhood traditions that have fallen by the wayside. And from now on, I'm going to be a lot more skeptical about what I read online.

From L to R for the three eggs in front: beet juice, red cabbage, turmeric

I ♥ my vintage egg dish

Toward the back, between a brownish beet egg and a blue egg, you can see the result of wasting grape juice to try to colour eggs.

[Edited to update title and for minor phrasing. Follow me on my official site: AspasiaSBissas.com]

Mayo Clinic (How-to Homemade Mayonnaise and an Egg Salad Recipe]

I know it's a little late to be posting Easter egg photos (unless you celebrate Orthodox Easter) but for me Easter eggs mean egg salad, and this year that led to me making my own mayonnaise. Heady stuff, I know.

 

This was my second year experimenting with natural dyes. I got the best results with red cabbage (blue) and turmeric (yellow). I should have taken some of the blue eggs out sooner in order to get a more pastel shade but...hindsight. I had less success with onion skins (the short soak was supposed to make orange eggs but they ended up looking like regular brown eggs) and green tea. The tea eggs came out a slightly greenish brown shade, again too close to regular brown eggs. So I put them in the blue dye and ended up with a bizarre army green shade. Next year I'll try not to let Easter sneak up on me. And hopefully next year I'll also be able to find beets! The lack of red/pink eggs pains me.

 

Anyway, on to the Mayonnaise. This is one of those things I've been wanting to make for years. I kept hearing how easy it was and how it blows commercial mayo out of the water. Since I finally had the opportunity I went for it.

The ingredients that initially go into the processor are an egg, an egg yolk, flour, sugar, lemon juice, water, and vinegar.

 

After it's all blended:

 

The recipe I used takes the step of gently cooking the egg mixture (I'm assuming as an anti-salmonella measure), but as it required constant stirring I couldn't take a photo. I ended up with a slightly thickened liquid, which I placed back in the (washed) processor, along with dry mustard powder, a pinch of cayenne and kosher salt.

 

After another quick blend:

 

As I started slowly adding the oil (a bit of olive and a lot of sunflower) I was still skeptical that this watery mixture was going to turn into mayonnaise. But somehow, when all the oil was added and I took off the lid, I found this:

 

Mayonnaise! Cooking is magic...


 

Egg and Herb Salad

4 hard-cooked eggs, chopped
4 tbs mayonnaise or sour cream
1/2 tsp salt, or to taste
1/4 tsp paprika
1 tbs chopped chives or green onion
1/2 tsp dried, crumbled dill weed (or 1/2 tbs fresh, chopped)

Combine all ingredients well and chill until ready to serve between slices of buttered bread.

Serves 2

(I made the egg salad with home-grown dill and onions, as well as the mayo, and served it on homemade bread. I feel so domestic! On another note, this has a shelf life of 3 to 4 days, while commercial mayo lasts forever. What the heck do they put in that stuff?)

Photos by Whimsy Bower  

[Edited to update title and for formatting. Follow me on my official site: AspasiaSBissas.com]