Beets don’t work. I dreamt that I was harvesting red golf balls from a stream and woke up in anticipation to see my latest experiment of hardboiled eggs in beet dye. With nervous excitement, I dipped my fingers into the crimson vinegary beet blood to find: three brown farm eggs. Slightly more brown then when they went in. Not red at all, though my fingernails are beet red as I type this.
Then I read about how beets don’t make a good dye on the first site that I found: Beets don't Dye
Now, if I had a personal homesteading assistant with a blackberry I would know this. Or perhaps Mamie knew this and didn’t pass it on. Actually she would not have made Easter eggs at all because she wouldn’t have wanted to waste a valuable egg. Something I know about after my two month of no groceries shopping (and why I want chickens so badly) eggs are precious.
Do you know what I mean about thinking something seems so right but then it isn’t. You would think that you have a sure winner, but in the end there was a snafu and a part jutted out contrary; something doesn’t quite fit in the equation and it’s all thrown off kilter. It can happen with people too like a chemical reaction there are molecules that bond and others that fly off into their own electrical field, it’s part of the Collision theory.
Our Parisian friends with a baby who now live an hour from us in a big new house are not really part of our lives anymore, they live a faster paced life. We used to shop at Ikea with them and eat snack-paks of bacon flavored puffs as an apèro. We don’t have anything in common anymore. We spend our free time these days with my husband’s coworker. He has three kids and they have an urban farm, ducks, geese, chicken and a tree house. We grilled homemade pork sausages outside in December on their patio and then they gave us directions to the organic pig farms run by the mom and sister that is my favorite place now. He is a physics teacher that helps my husband with designs a windmill for electricity and has offered us a chicken and duck for when we have a place for them. We hunt for mushrooms together, we discuss when the wild asparagus will show.
Living a “slow” life is anything but slow, it’s a lot of hard work and when I have a spare moment I am going to spend it with people that make me happy, who inspire me, who make me feel comfortable. We still see the Parisians once or twice a year, and we enjoy catching up with them. We spoke to them last night and they are pregnant again so today, I am going to mail a box loaded with maternity clothes and goodies. But when we have an extra day this weekend, we won’t be driving to their house, we will be in the forests hunting wild asparagus with our foraging friends. So, it’s a law of chemistry. You can’t fight the structures of our make up and reactions of other people’s compounds. Either they stick or they don’t. Me, I’ll be making egg salad sandwiches, looking for a house with land for chickens and packing that gift box.
18 Comments:
Darn on the whole beet thing! I love beets...
It is true that you have to find your people. And when you find them it feels so right. I feel like that is a big challenge for me - I love my friends in Paris but I still haven't find those people who just feel like they get it or me. But I am content to enjoy how much my friends have either helped me grow and change or have reminded me of who I am - even if they aren't at all like me. (I'm still looking for my hiking, mushroom hunting buddy here in Paris though!)Umm...maybe we just need to get the heck out of the city.
Yeh, you guys need to move down here and be part of our commune, lol.
They are nice people and we are still good friends with them, but you know how time flies and you have to use it wisely. Come down here and hike and forage for mushrooms!
So glad that you are back to blogging, I'll have to go and read what you have been up to!
True about beets, fortunately, since they're A's favourite food and she tends to get them all over her clothes!
My husband dyes Easter eggs using onion skins. If I recall right, he'll get little leaves and assorted garden debris, tie it to the egg with a string, and place the egg in a pot of water with the onion skins. The leaves/sprigs leave the pattern on the egg and the egg is colored! Have to use white eggs though, we found the brown eggs we usually have don't come out as well.
Sometimes you have to experiment without research just to explore and have fun and work with reasonable hypothesis. When it doesn't work you can then be impressed with science and math and end up knowing even more than you would have if you'd just known that beets (for instance) won't dye eggs.
I'm supposed to go nettle hunting this week and I'm so excited.
I think it takes a while to find our true tribes but you know it when you have.
I noticed that when we changed and some old friends didn't there was a little resentment on each side. Now w're like you: twice yearly catch ups work fine.
PS I'm confused: if you don't have chickens and don't buy eggs, how can you make egg salad sandwiches?
0nions are a great idea, tumeric seems to work too, but i wanted to just do red like the old pagan fertility days. i'll have to research it some more.
angelina, its so fun being a scientist at home. have fun with the nettles! wear gloves!!
andrea--we can food shop. just not consumer shopping. we did do a no food shopping strike for jan and feb against GMOs (there were a bunch of french activists doing a hungry strike so we were in solidarity to them. so now, yes, we buy food but only from farmers and the health food store.
I'm actually going to try natural dyes myself this year. Did you try the cold dye method Martha Stewart suggests?
http://www.marthastewart.com/portal/site/mslo/menuitem.3a0656639de62ad593598e10d373a0a0/?vgnextoid=546576ecfd22f010VgnVCM1000003d370a0aRCRD&autonomy_kw=natural%20egg%20dyes&rsc=header_2
I also found this website with some tips:
http://www.curbly.com/Chrisjob/posts/3840-Curbly-Video-Podcast-Naturally-Dyed-Easter-Eggs-
I can relate. There are a lot of people I don't see much anymore.
But that's OK -- I'm making new friends. I've made a lot of new friends in the Weston A. Price Foundation. We have get-togethers where we bring potluck food (fermented foods, organic salads, raw milk cheese, etc.).
Shopping is what people do when they don't have anything else to do. I am too busy making ferments and roasting chickens and gardening to find time for the mall. Plus, it's boring.
I really thought the beets would work!
Here's a site I found with some ideas for natural dyes:
http://chemistry.about.com/library/weekly/aa042003a.htm
great linkage ladies, i'll be checking those out. red onions! yes.
the insides of the eggs were a nice blush rosé color, so was our egg salad lunch. lol.
i dont have a lot of eggs left though, in the way the mamie was frugal, i think we will be dying just the broken shells or something else like packing peanuts or blocks of wood from the dumpster, we just saw some
amen on the busy fermenting, I had another pop fizz all over the place, lucky i opened it outside, but its soooooo good. kimchee for dinner tonight!
My grandmother makes pickled eggs from the juice left over from pickled beets. The eggs get really purple. I realize it's not the same thing as trying to dye shells, but I'm wondering - did you use vinegar with your beets for your experiment?
R&T Mom
Oops! If I could read, I would see that you mention vinegar in your first paragraph.
R&T Mom
Eggs are a precious commodity. They are so expensive these days. But my kids love them hardboiled. They are such a great source of protein. I bought some grade B eggs at the health food store the other day for a cheaper price for our Easter Eggs. I am looking forward to egg salad sandwiches and potato salad next week!
Riana - I can't remember why now, but the red onion skins didn't work as well as yellow/brown onion skins, which, oddly enough gave a pinkish color to the eggs. Something DH learned from his mother in CH many years ago.
Riana,
I found one more link for you:
http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/recipes/hungrymind/eggdyes.html
I bought my supplies last night. I felt a bit odd buying onion skins, but the cashier was so nice! She told me about how her grandma dyed eggs with her that way growing up and what a special tradition it was.
I'm looking forward to my own tradition with my son!
Hope your attempts with the few remaining eggs went well.
In all the recipes about beets they say you can use pickled beets, which is a high percentage of vinegar (or Martha says you can use 4 cups of beets to get pink) which i think is a big waste of four cups of beets!
Benji has to get some groceries for his grandpa so i told him to get me some eggs to play with. Then i can present them to gramps on sunday when i make him easter lunch. (making a pork roast)
thanks for all the great links, i'll post some photos soon
I have personally had many disappointed experiences with natural egg dying, but my son just did a class on it and I couldn't beleive the results with red cabbage and blueberries-rich deep colors. What she said was you have to use a LOT of material. She FILLED a stockpot with red cabbage and boiled it down and added water and boiled it down more...and let the eggs soak overnight. But would all that good food really be worth it for a little color?
I hear Melanie on the food waste, btw. And here! I forgot what I wanted to say (i think i deleted my other comment anyways) -- I tried to make green frosting with natural food dyes from the health food store last weekend and it was, um, tan. Taupe maybe? SO totally not green. We ended up pureeing spinach and it worked beautifully. But major disappointment before our rebound. I love your musings about friendship and spending time with others who complete you. Or at least are sympatico. My dad and I used to forage mushrooms and jerusalem artichokes when I was a kid. Now I share a community garden plot with a friend. Love to bond over food... So glad I followed Doodah's link to your blog!!
In Lithuania it is a tradition to dye eggs with onion skins and leaves+flowers from the forest/garden. We reuse old female stockings to keep the decorations in place and then boil eggs in onion skin broth that had sat overnight. It's really nice when the plants leave inprints on eggs, like fossils. And it's extremely fun for kids to make! In older times people used wax for decoration and eggs looked like ( piece of art..)
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