Coloring Eggs

It's Spring, and time to hunt some eggs.
As is our annual custom, this Saturday we'll be hunting these brightly colored eggs.

If you haven't already, do not buy those pricey egg dying kits in the supermarkets. You can dye eggs with natural colors from beets, spinach, onion skins, and other veggies. Or as we did last year and this, you can use food coloring (McCormick, for example).

For each dye bath combine 1/2 cup boiling water with 1 tsp vinegar and 10 drops of food coloring in a cup or bowl. You can mix your own colors by using 5 drops red and 5 drops yellow for orange, for example. Leave the hard-cooked eggs in the dye bath for 3-5 minutes, or longer for a deeper color. Use tongs or a slotted spoon to remove eggs and place on wax or parchment paper to dry, blot any excess dye with a paper towel. If you plan to eat your colored eggs, don't leave them unrefrigerated for more than a couple of hours at a time.

Marans eggs dyed up to look like this in the house, but...

McCormick's has a chart on the back of their Assorted and Neon! dye sets showing ratios for making various colors, suggesting around 20 drops of dye in each cup, but we found that around ten drops total in each cup will give a nice pastel color. We have brown eggs, so our colors have a deeper shade for most colors, and some colors didn't turn out so well.

...looked like this in the sunlight outside!

Our Marans eggs are a chocolate color to begin with, but after they were dyed, they looked very dark brown or black in ambient indoor light. But out in the sunlight they showed a deep, almost metallic shade of whatever color. Very nice!

We've already had an egg hunt of sorts. We have two Campbell ducks and two Muskovies sitting on nests (which are fairly well hidden--we know because we had to hunt a bit). Our goose, Buttercup, was on a nest (also pretty well hidden) until a couple of days ago. She decided not to stay on her nest. Now each day she lays an egg in the yard for us to hunt up! So much for the Bunny....

We typically don't eat things that have been dyed. Of course, we're not going to eat these dyed egg shells, but will eat at least some of the eggs inside. As mentioned above, you could also use beets, spinach, onion skins, and other veggies to color your eggs. Time permitting, we'll be trying some of these this week.

Steam, don't boil those hard cooked eggs.

Sometime last year we experimented with steaming our eggs to hard cook them. We like the way they turn out. Just steam the eggs in a vegetable steamer set over boiling water for 10 minutes. Cool them right away under cold water so they don't develop that gray-green ring around the yolk. If you like soft cooked eggs (the yolk is still runny), take the eggs out of the steamer after 5 minutes.

Egg Steamers on Amazon.

Raising Chickens

Our chickens give us more than enough eggs each day for our family. They also provide manure for the compost piles and garden.

Reasons to Raise Chickens

When we started to raise chickens, we had only one main reason: Cacklefruit! We wanted the eggs, and not just any eggs, we could more easily get those at the grocery store. We wanted the healthiest eggs--we wanted complete control over the quality of the eggs we eat. Since we began our small flock, we have discovered other reasons for having our feathered friends.
  Read More >>

Our Compost System

We've used just about every method of composting: sheet composting, the 14-day method, vermicomposting (earthworms), and the make-a-pile-and-leave-it-alone-for-a-year-or-two method, and combinations in between. We still have some piles and bins with compost in them from a year or more ago. We still use and like vermicomposting.

But we've decided that all that pile-building and turning and watering and hauling is too much work. Instead, we ... Read More >>

Winter Fruits and Veggies

"They all wait for You
    To give them their food in due season.
You give to them, they gather it up;
    You open Your hand, they are satisfied with good."  --Psalm 104:27-28

Summer harvest is the time most gardeners look forward to the most, because of the variety of fruits and vegetables that are coming to the table from the garden.

Fewer foods are in season during the winter than in summer, and the farmers markets and produce sections in the supermarkets reflect this. However, winter boasts some surprising healthful foods in season, which usually means saving a little money when we buy them. Here are some of the standouts:

Dark leafy greens, such as kale, chard and collards, thrive in the chill of winter. In fact, kale and collards taste better after a frost. These greens are rich in vitamins A, C and K. Collards, mustard greens and escarole also provide folate.

Citrus fruits--lemons, limes, oranges and grapefruit--are at their best in the winter. Citrus fruits are loaded with vitamin C--one medium orange provides your daily recommended dose. Citrus fruits are also rich in flavonoids, predominantly hesperidin, which is claimed to boost HDL cholesterol and lower LDL cholesterol and triglycerides.

Potatoes sometimes get thrown into the same category as white rice or white bread, however, potatoes are a whole food containing several beneficial nutrients. They haven't been stripped of healthful nutrients like white rice, white bread, and other processed starches. They're an excellent source of vitamins C and B6, purported immunity boosters. They also provide folate and fiber. The purple potatoes are rich in anthocyanins, antioxidants linked to lower cancer and heart disease rates.

Finally, there are the winter squashes--butternut, acorn, delicata and spaghetti--all excellent choices in the winter, low in calories but high in vitamins A, C, B6 and K. Oh, and potassium and folate.

March in the Garden

Plant veggies indoors (seed cucumbers and melons) and out.

Plant summer veggies.

Fertilize lawns.

Begin to fertilize citrus and avocado.

Plant cool-season vegetables, such as cabbage, broccoli, spinach, radishes, Asian greens, lettuce, and parsley.

Harden-off tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants by moving them outside, beneath a plastic cover or inside a cold frame. Plant them in the garden after the last possible frost.

Prune away frost-damaged areas on citrus.

Quilting

We try to find and encourage hobbies that add to our self-sufficiency and quality of life, so that each of us can make a meaningful contribution to our household, and can develop life-long life skills.

Abby took a couple of quilting classes (at Central Sewing Center) . See what happened! With a little bit of coaching from her Aunt Marjorie, she made this set for her room. And has more projects in the works. We're very proud of her skills and accomplishments.


Abby has taken not only to sewing, but also to cooking, gardening, and playing the violin, all of which she does very well. She is currently trying her hand at making lace.

If we can do it, so can you. Make a hobby out of something your great-great-grandparents did as a matter of necessity--gardening, sewing, woodworking, animal husbandry, soap making, bread baking, or .... You may be surprised at what you can accomplish.