I'm the Egg Man: (Mostly) Naturally Dyed Eggs

We haven't been able to get ourselves that psyched up for the spring holidays, but once mom started seeing all these beautiful naturally dyed eggs, we started to change our tune.  We are notoriously bad at using up all our groceries each week and the thought of using up some food that was likely otherwise on it's way to the can helped tremendously.  After checking out several good tutorials (here, here, and here), we scoured our fridge/freezer and got together the following:

  - frozen blueberries (that were fresh and then frozen by mom - we like them best that way);
  - yellow onion skins;
  - spinach (frozen and then thawed);
  - edamame (fresh);
  - frozen corn;
  - fresh strawberries (mashed up a bit); AND
  - our leftover COLORED spaghetti (the most non-natural food item we used)

Following the Chocolate Muffin Tree's tutorial, we put each raw egg in a square of cloth with some of the food items (we had a hard time not putting a little bit of everything in), wrapped it up, and placed all the bundles in a pot.  Actually, we started out with the egg in the cloth, but switched to putting the egg in after the other food items -- it was hard not to break them!  We then covered them with cold water (about 2 inches above the bundles), brought the water to a boil, and then let it simmer for 15 minutes.  Once finished, we drained them on a cooling rack and opened them when they were cool to the touch.

We think these turned out really beautiful -- although the spinach definitely gave all of them an overall green/brown color that we could do without.  Much to our surprise, the colored spaghetti did not ruin the natural look -- the blueberries, onion skins, and edamame gave the best natural color.  And the spaghetti, blueberries, and edamame gave the best texture.  The frozen corn and strawberries appeared not to do much.  If we did anything different next time, it would be to use more onion skin.  And make sure to distribute the food all around the egg -- the color really transfers the best where pressed up against the egg.

Aren't these cool?  Plus, Cami basically ate all kinds of fruit and veggies that she wouldn't eat if you put them on a plate in front of her.  The reason we only had one egg with all blueberries was because Cami ate most of them.  So, you'll have that going for you, too, which is nice.

the orange is from onion skin and the yellow is from edamame

all blueberries in the front

edamame - texture and color