Easter Egg Fun!

Dyeing eggs with food scraps

When the Easter Bunny comes to town, a sugar overload isn’t far behind!  While jellybeans, chocolate rabbits and marshmallow treats are often part of holiday memories past, this year keep Easter fun (and calorie free) with egg hunts and coloring activities that will surely keep everyone busy for hours!

At Dole, we’ve been thinking about how to repurpose some common produce scraps to get beautifully colored Easter eggs.  With produce covering an entire rainbow of different hues, we learned you can pretty much use anything to get a variety of colors – purple cabbage, onion skins (red and yellow), beets, spinach, spices like turmeric, chili and even coffee can give you vibrant colors too!  You can even try fresh herbs like parsley, dill or fruits such as blackberries!  We especially like the idea of getting an ombre effect with your colored eggs by picking one type of dye and playing around with different lengths of time the eggs are dipped!

All you need are a variety of heat proof containers like large mugs or mason jars, hard boiled eggs, boiling water, vinegar and dyeing medium!

• Simply add your dyeing medium to boiling water to extract the color. Usually a one to one ratio is best such as 1 cup scraps or 1T spice to 1 cup water, but experiment with different ratios to make your own color shades!
• Once the dye is cooled and strained, pour into mason jar, add 1T vinegar (or lemon juice) per 1 cup water. This will help colors remain vibrant.
• Add eggs and allow to sit for 1-2 hours or even overnight! Remember the longer the eggs are submerged, the deeper the color will be! Remove eggs carefully and let dry.

Once eggs are dry you can go a step further and embellish with a white paint pen for a fun two-tone effect.

Published March 1, 2021