This evening Z, Jeremiah and I experimented with natural Easter egg dyeing.


We boiled enough different vegetables and other plant materials we were reusing our few cooking pots two or three times each. Beets, prickley pear cactus tuna, and blackberries for shades of red; spinach in hopes of a yellow or even a green; and yellow and red onion skins.




The onion skins we soaked, then wrapped around eggs, wrapping them afterwards in scrap fabric from an old sheet, from a great tutorial we found on Instructables. The wrapped eggs were then boiled


The rest of the plants were each chopped and boiled for about ten to fifteen minutes. For some things, this may not have been long enough.


The strained juices looked promising - that's the beet stock in the center, flanked by prickley pear and blackberry.


As you can probably see, the spinach stock didn't have much verve. At least, not after we accidentally dumped a bit too much vinegar in it (a dash of vinegar is supposed to help the color stick to your eggs). That mug isn't filled with anything you'd want to drink - it's a turmeric stock, which we'd hoped would make a nice yellow dye. It probably would have worked better if we'd boiled the eggs in it, but as a dye it was pretty pale.


Some early tears made it clear a fresh dinner needed to accompany the dyeing event...


Including, naturally, freshly boiled eggs. (The "not pretty ones," Z insisted.) She has eaten hard boiled eggs at salad bars, but this apparently was the first she'd seen unshelled before her very eyes. She was tickled.


The eggs wrapped in red onion skins were the most beautiful, followed by those left to steep for a while in the beet juice. We'd recommend beets over either of our other two red options, hands down.


With a light rubbing of vegetable oil after they had dried, the eggs were truly lovely.

If you've used natural pigments to dye eggs, let us know your tips! We'll definitely be doing this again next year, and will rotate in some other plant materials to try for some more strong colors. We'll also be wrapping a lot more in red onion skins...