Two years ago I started doing some research in to the Feingold Diet
and was slowly becoming aware of what exactly was in our food. Nowadays
when I talk to people about clean eating I am always sure to tell them,
“Watch out! As you start reading more and more about this, you might
very well go crazy thinking that there is nothing safe to eat!” I tell
them that because I almost did go crazy when I first started really
delving in to it all: Monsanto, GMO, carageenan, artificial flavors,
colors, preservatives, and so-on and so-on. I decided that there was no
way I could let my children dye Easter eggs with commercially
available, artificial egg dye. After researching it, I wanted to dye
our Easter eggs with all natural dyes. I bought a red onion and filled
the bag with all the leftover onion peels, I went through my cupboards
and refrigerator looking to see what I could find since I didn’t want to
spend a fortune.
I ended up using red onion skins, green tea, black tea, paprika,
lemon zest, lime zest, spinach juice (ewww!), and the juice from some
pickled beets. I put the coloring ingredients in boiling water and I
think I added at least one tablespoon of vinegar to each bowl.
Green tea resulted in a pretty yellow hue.
Surprisingly enough the pickled beet juice yielded a very pale pink.
Black tea led to a pale brown.
The eggs that were soaked in red onion peels turned a lovely burnt sienna.
Overall I awarded my homemade Easter egg experiment a success. My
younger kids were only 3 and 1 at the time so I think I was more excited
then them over the results. I didn’t get to repeat the experiment last
year but I’m hoping to do it again this year with some different
ingredients.
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