Enjoy some pre-egg salad pictures while I write Sylvan’s birthday letter.
You can try those natural egg dyes, like spinach, blueberries, and coffee, but in the end most of us return to food coloring, with its associated propylene glycol content (generally safe, occasional “cardiac arrest after rapid i.v. injection of drugs containing large amounts of propylene glycol solvent“). I diligently brewed spinach, coffee, and blueberry “teas,” strained the foodstuffs out with cheesecloth, added vinegar, and those pretty, earthy dyes yielded underwhelming tannish eggs.
Although the prettiest egg, in my opinion, the tan one on the right with the purplish-brown overdye, has a coffee first coat (yeah, I know, I could have just bought tan eggs). The bright pinks and greens are the result of unadulterated food coloring, and the purples, browns, and dark greens bloomed from Sylvan’s forays into mixing and pouring. All the mottling comes from mixing dyes with olive oil, creating a resist-dye, like a batik.
Good for you! I had ambitions of boiling beets and turmeric for egg dye, but then decided a 2 year old wouldn’t know the difference. Better to spend my time planning the garden and tell him about the egg dying tradition next year!
Love the olive oil idea. I kind of like the natural looking egg colors, but I guess that misses the point.