Easter Eggs

We tried to dye our easter eggs all natural this year. Through my food co-op we got a kit with a bunch of stuff to use in it. It had blueberries, spinach, yellow and red onions, beets and carrots. So I diligently boiled them all down to nothingness in water as instructed and we dyed away. There are definately ones I wouldn't ever do again - but some were WAY cooler than we'd expected.
If nothing else the jars of pretty colored water looked cool.

These are the finished product after sitting in the water for anywhere from 5 to 10 minutes. The pale pale pink ones on the left are from the beets. Not as impressive as I'd expected from something that stained my hands cutting it up. The orange ones on the left are from the yellow onion skins. They are actully really bright and pretty. On the right - the one on the top that is kind of a gross brown is from the red onion. Then two more pale pink beet ones. The dark ones were by far our favorite from the blueberry. A really true blue color. The lighter blue one on the bottom was when we mixed the blueberry and the beet together to try to get purple. It didn't work. The carrot didn't change the color of the egg one bit even after 20 minutes so we just dumped it out. The spinach just gave the egg the palest yellow tint so we didn't take it out. It's in the next group.

On the advice of Martha Stewart we left some in each color overnight and this is what came out. The three on the top where in the spinach. It did leave a nice darkish green scum layer all over the eggs - but I washed that off and they are an ugly yellow/green color. Those dark vivied orange ones are the yellow onion skins and they are actually kind of marbled. The red ones are the beets and the ugly brown one is the red onion skins.
All in all - I think the only ones I'd do again are the yellow onion skins and the blueberries. And I think the kids would prefer the fake neon colors. But at least I can say we did it once. And I've been told this makes the eggs taste a little funny so we'll see on Easter when we make deviled eggs from them. That will definately affect whether we do them again.