Do you think that maybe the Easter Bunny will have to wear snowshoes for the early Easter Day this year? The weather forecasts say that it should be “warm” weather for the event, so we will see if they are right. Keep a few sweaters on hand just in case of a “warm” failure.

We could fill this whole newspaper with Easter facts, traditions, and events but let’s talk about a fun event that almost everyone can take in. It can be a bit of a mess (more mess, more fun?), but dying Easter eggs can create a lot of beautiful objects and memories for the season. For the super fancy end, the slow hand painting with wax and dye can be life long works of art. The simple side would be a quick dip in food coloring and maybe a few stickers put on the eggs. Lets go for in between.

I taught many classes on how to use brown onion skins to get a beautiful, but different and easy to do dyed egg. You can use eggs that you have blown out (keep forever) or fresh raw eggs that will be cooked (refrigerate or very short time at room temp in order to eat). Another method is to let the raw eggs that became cooked, dyed eggs, age to become forever eggs.

The items you will need will be your choice of eggs, 2 large handfuls of brown, dried onion skins, tiny flower leaves are optional,1 quart of water and vinegar. Boil the water and crushed onion skins for 10 minutes and then add 2 Tablespoons of vinegar. The dye part is now ready to use at a simmering temperature. There are 2 ways to prepare your eggs for the process. You can just put in the room temperature, raw eggs or the blown out eggs (submerge so that they fill with dye water to keep from floating) in the simmering dye water and remove after 20 minutes. WILL BE HOT! For fancy eggs you will need a stretchy material like panty hose and small green leaves or leaf parts of small house plants. Panty hose with runs or seams are great and add interest. Apply greens to the egg, hold in place and wrap tightly with the panty hose, tie with string to hold in place and put in the simmering dye bath for 20 minutes. You could substitute crushed onion skins instead of greens to get more distinct lines of the onion skin edges. With both methods, let them cool down naturally before handling. With the ones in the panty hose, carefully cut off the panty hose and brush away anything that remains on the egg. The eggs will look a bit on the dull side and now is the time to gently rub on a bit of olive oil to make them shine.

You can use the dye bath for a lot of eggs and refresh with more water and/or onion skins and vinegar. It can also be cooled down and reheated at a later time for more use. Refrigerate eggs that you plan to eat or do a very short room temperature display. If you don’t get to eating the now cooked eggs, they can be put in an egg carton and stored in a place out of the way for several months to “dry out”. There may be some smell so pick a place where it will not get to you. These eggs and the blown out eggs will be forever eggs.

Other egg notes include the egg shell surface will influence how the dye colors the egg. Not all eggs are super smooth. If you have a cracking problem, you may want to do a pin prick on both ends of the raw egg or place a cool or room temperature egg in the dye bath before heating it up.

There is a whole big world of natural dying methods available with a few clicks of the computer and you could easily use your fruit and veggies to make a wide range of dyed eggs. Of course the good old plastic eggs are the best for outdoor egg hunts. The drawback is that you can’t smell the forgotten ones later on. A wonderful time of the year to all my Loyal Readers!