Easter Eggs

My 6th grade science fair project, which won a blue ribbon thank you very much, involved dyeing bits of fabric with food. As in beets, cabbage, blueberries, onion skins, and coffee. I think my investigation was two-fold: which plants gave the strongest dyes, and how to set the dye so I didn't wind up with only vague stains on my fabric.

It turns out the same plants can also turn my Easter Eggs lovely colors. Beets and blueberries give the girliest colors, of course, but coffee gives a nice brown, and saffron turns the eggs a very spring-like pastel yellow.

Chickens can turn their eggs lovely colors, too. Not by will, of course. Or by eating beets. Different breeds produce eggs in different colors. Yep, that whole 'brown eggs are healthier than white eggs' thing is irrelevant. The two simply come from different chicken breeds.

Riverdog's arrangement (L) and mine.

 Several years ago, I stumbled across blue Araucana eggs at the Berkeley farmers' market. Actually, I stumbled across them in Martha Stewart-- she just so happens to keep like 20 different breeds of chicken at her eensy little estate. Er, estates-- and therefore recognized them at the market. But the vendor I bought them from was elderly and frail, so I had a feeling he wouldn't be there this year. I was right. Riverdog Farm, though, had these very pretty dozens for sale, so I looked through several cartons to find just the right mix. (They probably hate that, but for six dollars a dozen, I feel entitled to pick The Perfect Eggs.)

These are almost too pretty to dye. In fact, egg producers often raise Araucanas mainly for their novelty at Easter. But I think the combination of natural shell color and plant dye makes for some striking eggs in my Easter basket.

Last year's attempt

This year, I decided to pull a few dye tricks out of my 6th grade hat, since I wasn't thrilled with my results from last year. Red onion skins, which my local grocery store gave me for free, spinach, and turmeric were added to my blueberry-and-beet-and-coffee repertoire, with some unexpected results. For one, onion skins create a seemingly intense reddish-brown dye, but their impact on my eggs was not so intense. For another, spinach made an unimpressive dye. I was disappointed. For a third, dry blueberry dye that I put on a brown egg rubbed off when I rinsed the egg, leaving not a pale blue color but a pale brown color. As in, paler than the egg originally started, as if some of the natural brown color rubbed off, too. And fourthly, two years in a row beets have left my eggs speckled pink, not pink all over.

Blue and brown eggs, before and after a blueberry bath (and naked again)

 (Upper) Brown egg in coffee bath. (Lower) Coffee egg 2nd from left in back row.

Spinach dye (blah...)

Speckled beet egg

 (L, top to bottom) 1. Naked blueberry 2. Blueberry 3. Turmeric and blueberry 4. Spinach 5. Turmeric
(R, top to bottom) 1. Onion skin 2. Coffee 3. Beet 4. Onion skin 5. White egg boiled in beet bath

One of the things I love about these dyes is how not uniform and sometimes bizarre the results are. They look nothing like the food coloring-dyed eggs of my childhood, but don't quite look they way they did last year, either. I'm not sure that what I wound up with is prettier than what I started with, but either way, these eggs look lovely at the Easter table.

She's Such a Granola

Last week, I was supervising three students while eighty-something of their peers went on an end-of-year field trip. As these three watched a movie, one began helping herself to a bag of granola that belonged to the teacher whose room we were using had broken into. A second student commented, "That stuff is so NASTY. Ugh. How can you eat that?" The first replied, "Well, Mr. [Granola Owner] loves it. He eats it all the time. So." The third kept quiet, but also didn't eat a single clustered oat out of that bag.

I was reminded of similar conversations at my own high school in which we labeled health- and environmentally-conscious students "granolas." I don't think I got labeled a granola, though I not only ate granola, but ate HOMEMADE granola, which is even more granola than eating the store-bought kind.

Years later, I craved my dad's homemade granola, and wanted to change the stigma of granola from Something That Burned-Out Hippies Eat to Something That Martha Stewart Would Make. I called my dad for the recipe, thinking he had invented his, or at least had modified it significantly from its original source. But no, his recipe was lifted directly from some 1970s vegan how-to-get-holy-while-chanting-naked-with-of-all-your-white-hippie-friends cookbook that was probably printed on reclaimed toilet paper and bound with recycled inner tubes. He told me he began making it during his kitchen shifts at sesshin, his Zen Buddhist meditation retreats. While he was fully clothed, I'm sure, this news was not any I intended to spread around my social circles, and would definitely not convince skeptics of the merits of granola.

Mr. Granola Owner Teacher, though, may be just the ally granola and I need. He happens to be in the middle of a health and fitness campaign whereby he has lost over 30 pounds and competed successfully in his first triathlon. All this, of course, is attributable to his love for and liberal use of granola. 

Non-flavored, Non-Naked Granola
adapted from Some Hippie Cookbook

4 cups rolled oats
1/4 to 1/2 cup sunflower seeds
1/2 cup walnuts (sometimes I like to add halved almonds too)
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 cup honey (I use agave)
1/8 cup oil, such as canola
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup raisins


Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
1. Mix together oats, salt, sunflower seeds, and walnuts. 
2. In a separate bowl, combine oil, honey or agave, and vanilla. 
3. Add wet ingredients to dry, and coat oat mixture evenly. Spread on shallow baking sheet. 
4. Bake for 20-25 minutes, stirring every 8-10 minutes. Mixture will be slightly wet but golden brown. 
5. Add raisins. Store in airtight container.

NOTES

*The original recipe says to add the walnuts at the end, but I like them toasted, so I include them in the mix to be baked. 

* You can add other goodies to the mix, such as cranberries, dried apple bits, or cherries. Other nuts work well, too. One of my recent batches included unsweetened shredded coconut. Fabulous.

*This recipe is fairly low in sugar, so it doesn't form the clusters that commercial granola does. This is great for those monitoring their sugar intake, but less great for teachers and their students who like to eat granola straight out of the bag. I like eating it as a cereal in the morning with a bit of milk. 

*Fresh fruit is fantastic in the bowl in the morning. Sliced banana and blueberries are my favorites.