It's all fun and games until the spinach water gets spilled

 

Friday was our self-proclaimed 'Science Day' as it was the first day of Spring Break. This was one of our projects for the day - naturally dying our Easter eggs. I really wish I could claim this idea as my own, but alas, I can't. It was another great suggestion from the produce co-op (Bountiful Baskets). It turned out to be a good lesson in history and green living, too. I think I wowed them with my extensive vocabulary of carotenoids, anthocyanins, and chlorophyll - I was, afterall, at the top of my food science class in college .... or maybe it was just their eyes glazing over with boredom. ;)

We talked about how the Indians or our kin would have dyed things if they couldn't go to the store and pull food coloring from the shelf and how, if we could grow all these things ourself, there would be no waste involved. No trash and the mashed vegetables could either be eaten or used back in the earth as compost. It was a lot of fun!

What we had to work with: spinach, beets, red and yellow onions peels, blueberries, dried red chile peppers, and carrots. I only had two sauce pots to work with so we limited ourselves on colors. The spinach didn't do too well. The beets and blueberries were awesome and the red chile peppers kind of made an orangeish-brown so we added the carrots and yellow onion peels and got a good gold color.

The procedure: Chop up each vegetable and put in just enough water to cover them while cooking so the colors will be more concentrated. The kids loved the beets. They were fascinated to see how it could go from looking so dull from the outside to a nice juicy color inside; not fascinated enough to taste it though, LOL. Cook them until soft and then with a potato masher smoosh them to let out as much color as possible. Next, use a strainer to push as much juice as possible from the produce into mugs that you've added a couple tablespoons of vinegar to (to help set the dye). Make sure each liquid is hot when you are finished, and add some hard-boiled eggs long enough until you like the color.

We had fun experimenting and coming up with different colors and effects, and then naming them. We found that if you washed off the egg when you pulled it out, you could come up with a slightly different color than if you just left all the juices sitting on it. We also found that you could rub off the dye if you did it immediately after coming out of the juices. That's how we came up with the letter ones. Some even changed colors as they dried. In particular, the coral reef one was really cool even though you can't see it in the picture. Some how, on that one the pink slightly dripped off leaving a mottled peach and pink color.

We got through a dozen eggs and the kids were still begging for more so we started mixing colors until Kalem got a little carried away with the green and the floor ended up covered with spinach water. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted. Looking forward to next year!