egg coloring 2013

Good Friday finds me once  again coloring eggs with

onion skins and herbs.

 

 This year I used rosemary springs inside the skins . That herb has grown so huge it looks almost like someone has left a Christmas tree at my kitchen door. I told  dh that it likes the Italian cooking I do so it leans into the deck, reaching for the door, making it easy for me to snip sprigs for cooking and away from the sun.

 all the other adjacent  plants reach the opposite direction?

 I wrap the skins snugly around the  raw eggs before I bundle them up in a coffee filter

and tie them  up with a bit o floss. then I boil them just like you would if

 making hard boiled eggs.  

I put vinegar into water, a mordant. The rosemary smells  most redolent as they cook.   

After peeling off the filter and skins from cooling eggs,  lovely marbled, mottled patterns are reveled .I  made a nest of Peli's hair,
aka Spanish moss, 

to cradle them for the photo.
 

I want to thank my flock o free range chicken for these fresh and nutritious little eggs. I have an egg  hunt almost daily as  they try to hide them. they have laid them in the car on the seat if you leave your window down. I have found eggs on top of car in the roof rack, in tool boxes, in deck chairs, and of course in the tall grasses and shrubs.
 

 

......to get to the egg salad of course! 

 

Spider lilies, basil, rosemary and Morea  iris  are in my Easter bouquet.
Be well and my your egg basket be overflowing!
 

 

eggs

one of my favorite ways to color eggs
 at Easter is to wrap them in onion skins and hard boil them.
i will often tuck in a fern or herb sprig in as a resist. i like red onions but other skins colors work. i bundle the eggs covered with skin in a coffee filter ( i have small eggs from some of my hens) or i cut a square of fabric that is then lightly bound at the gatherng point.i used 8 inch squares here.
 a little vinegar and i let them cook and color at the same time.

this is the simple process in photos to get organic Easters eggs in beautiful colors of gold, greens, and rust that look like they might have been hatched by some exotic wood fowl with no toxic dyes.
  start to collect onions skins ahead of time or make friends
with the produce manager at your local market.
the more skins you wrap the deeper the tones get.

gather the eggs, skins, herbs, coth wrapper square, and don't foreget a pair of scissors to snip the

wrapping string.

                                                         

these are bundles are ready for the pot

    boil as you would for hard boiled eggs.

              i also put a few uncovered eggs in as i ran out of skins.

these turned a warm golden brown but without the marbling/motling of skins wrapped ones.

these are unwrapped while still  quite warm as i cannot wait to see what happened .

                                                   i made a nest of fabric sevlages and strips.

                                                        hard to watch boiling eggs so
                                                                 

while i was waiting for the onion skin eggs,
 i finger painted some already boiled  eggs with food coloring the result of which
 i got more on my fingers than the egg
.

lovely  blue/green egg, scrap cloth, and my camera strap got some more color as well!

Happy Easter  to All!

Sonja