Chemistry in the Kitchen

I took it as some sort of sign that two people, from completely unrelated parts of my life, sent me information about naturally dying Easter eggs.

The photos from the blog posts I’ve seen show a beautiful result, silhouetted sprigs of grass and flowers against the white of the eggshells and bathed in natural dyes made with beets, tumeric and blueberries.

I’m dubious that I’ll end up so successful on this first attempt.

I’ve already had trouble achieving one key color: green.

Pink and darker pink were pretty easy. I just boiled beets and then boiled them some more to get different shades.

Brown was a cinch with boiled leftover coffee grounds. And, even with just a few scraps of peels from yellow onions in my kitchen basket, I was able to produce a lovely orange-yellow.

But green. Ugh. I boiled and boiled spinach until there was a slight hint of green in the water. Finally, I added some lime peel, which actually left me with more of a muted yellow dye.

The big question is whether the dye will stick to the boiled eggs. If I’m feeling ambitious, I may try to blow some eggs to add to our fragile decorative egg collection.

We’ll find out tomorrow.