Into each cup were put two tablespoons of white vinegar, 250ml of boiling water, and one dye-paper. The packet contained five colour papers: red, orange, green, blue and yellow – a rainbow of colours! □ Since yellow does not really change the colour of brown eggs, I added that in with the orange. While the eggs were cooking, I prepared the dyes. When they started to boil I set the timer for six minutes. I put all my eggs into one pan (no, not into one basket!! □ ) and covered them with cold water. It’s best to dye the eggs just after they have been boiled and while they are still warm. One of my sisters-in-law sent me a packet this year – thank you Veronika!! An easier and foolproof way, is to use ready-made egg dyes. There are a number of ways to dye the eggs using various natural vegetable dyes such as beetroot and spinach juice, or dried onion skins. It’s a tradition I still keep alive, all these many years later! Instead, my brothers and I would help mum dye hard boiled hens’ eggs on Good Friday. Maybe they had been? Those store-bought eggs didn’t make it into our house very often. In the run-up to Easter, the shops would start selling brightly coloured hard-boiled eggs – you would be able to find them right next to the fresh eggs, in virtually every store! They were always looking so perfect and shiny – as though they had been laquered. The finished eggs would be hung with a piece of thread on the cut branches of forsythia or other flowering shrubs, and they would decorate the house during the Easter festival. The eggs might be painted, pasted with cut-outs, drizzled with coloured wax – anything and everything was allowed and encouraged as far as decorating techniques went. The resulting blown eggs would be washed and dried before being decorated. For several weeks before Easter, instead of cracking eggs open to use them in cooking or baking, a hole would be pierced in either end of the egg (a larger hole in the ‘flatter’ end), and the egg white and yolk would be blown out through the holes. When we were children, my brothers and I would decorate blown hens’ eggs in the weeks before Easter. For as long as I can remember, I have associated Easter with brightly coloured eggs.
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