Easter Traditions?

[CarleeAnn]

Hoppy Easter y’all!!


My husband and I were discussing dying eggs when we realized we both had very different traditions when it came to handling dyed Easter eggs.

My side of the family always dyed boiled eggs the night before, and then we put them out in the morning for the “hunt”. On Easter, once we found all the eggs (which may have been sitting out more than an hour now indoors) my grandma would de-shell them and make deviled eggs.
I just assumed this was the norm and what everyone did! I didn’t think anything wrong with it either.

My husband says they would dye boiled eggs maybe a few nights before, hide them, but once they were found they kept them around for decoration and then threw them away. He never liked Easter because he viewed this as wasteful (and I do too!).


The big difference is though- my husband pointed out that it may be unsanitary to eat the dyed eggs. I do remember the dye getting on to the egg whites, and I always thought it was fun to look at! But that does bring about the concern of how thin the shells were, how long they were sitting out, and if the egg dye/vinegar soaking the egg may have boosted any bacterial occurrences...

Maybe the vinegar kept the eggs better longer? Like they were pickled? But it is only 1tbsp for every 1/2 cup of water. I read that boiled eggs should not be st room temperature for more than 2 hours, but that just doesn’t seem right.

We decided to compromise this year- we only dyed eggs that were hollowed out. And the eggs I boiled will be for deviled eggs- undyed and not left out of the fridge until ready to serve.


Anywho- I want to know what you do! And what you think.

 

[needlessjunk]

After dying eggs we kept them in the frig. We never hunted for real eggs, but now we do that daily

 

[thumper650]

I colored eggs this year, only because I had some old ones that got warm in a power outage. I took pictures and told people my Pekins laid them for Easter.

 

[rebrascora]

We always died our eggs with wild flowers, ferns and onion skins. We went out and collected the wild flowers and leaves with an interesting structure and pressed them against the eggs, then carefully wrapped in brown onion skins and then old rags and boiled them.
I'm not sure if it is just a local tradition here in the North East of the UK but on Easter Sunday we rolled them down a steep hill and those that didn't break were then used for a jarping competition, similar to conkers, in that you would use your egg to try to break your opponents egg shell. I can't ever remember having an Easter Egg hunt. There were just competitions for the prettiest dyed egg.... using anything man made was considered cheating.... the hill rolling contest and the jarping contest. Most of the eggs got eaten but the prettiest one usually got pride of place on the mantelpiece and would sit there for months and eventually the contents would shrink and the egg would roll around inside the shell like a marble. It never smelled bad or anything.

I never worry about refrigerating eggs. I'm not sure why they would be any more likely to go bad once they have been boiled than they would before and I've eaten boiled eggs that have sat on the kitchen bench for over a week and still been fine. There is much less of a culture of refrigerating eggs here in the UK.... eggs are not refrigerated in the shops.... not sure if this is due to our climate being less hot than many parts of the USA or our fridges being smaller!

 

[Mylied]

The dye is non toxic and safe to eat. Leaving them out for hunting doesn't hurt them. We hunted boiled, dyed eggs and would leave them in our baskets, unrefrigerated for a few days while we ate them. No one got sick. Now with my kids we dye them the night before. I put them in the fridge until the next day. Hide them and they find them. We usually eat a few and have egg salad for lunch. They don't last longer than a day at my house.

 

[ashlandco]

I just tried dying hard boiled eggs with whipped cream! It would have worked better if we used white eggs though

 

[chickens really]

Hello..We also dyed hard boiled eggs and Mom would put them on the table in a bowl for us to look at. Once we went to bed she put in the fridge..Then we would eat hard boiled eggs the next day and the next day and the next day..
We hunted for Jellybeans, yucky coloured egg things and our Chocolate Bunnies..

 

[Kessel23]

When I was young we would to the same thing but just eat them when we found them. My little brothers still dye eggs each easter but afterwards we just put them in the fridge and eat them throughout the week.

 

[sourland]

Dyed and hid them on 'Easter Eve' to be hunted for the next day. Been eating them for 75 years and no so far. Hope that I have not just jinxed myself.

 

[rebrascora]

Dandelions and primroses and violets work well and ferns but it is fiddly keeping them all in position whilst you wrap them in the onion skins and then the old rags and tie with string. The onion skins provide a nice brown colouration around the flower colours. Oh and we rubbed them with butter after they were boiled to seal the colours and give them a nice sheen. The best bit was foraging for the wild plants, especially if Easter was early and there were very few flowers open.... that was probably more of an Easter hunt than any of the rest of it!