Food Friday: Easter Eggs

In the 70-ish years, since 1953, when Peeps hatched on the Easter scene, folks have been divided by these garish, sugary, chewy confections. Love them, or loathe them, Peeps are iconic fixtures in Easter baskets. Not content to rest on their yearly laurels, Peeps can now be had year-round, depending on the holiday. There can be more to hate. There are Halloween Peeps and Christmas Peeps. I even found Peep-flavored Pepsi at the store the other day while doing Food Friday due diligence. I did not buy, nor indeed, taste the Peep pop. Sometimes those branding ideas go too far for human tolerance.
https://www.farmersalmanac.com/marshmallow-peeps-facts-31037

I think jelly beans are universally loved, chocolate bunnies and eggs are scarfed down, Cadbury eggs have a lot of fans if you don’t mind all the calories (every 40 gram egg contains 177 calories and 26.5 grams of sugar). Peeps are practically health food with a mere 32 calories! Yay!

But do you remember the humble Easter egg? Eggs are the basis of Easter baskets. Eggs are the symbol of new life, pagans and Christians agree. Generations of children have hunted for Easter eggs, or rolled them across the White House lawn. And many of us sat patiently with grocery store PAAS Easter egg kits, coaxing colors and patterns onto obdurate eggs. Surely the Ukrainian Pysanky eggs are the most beautiful eggs ever seen! They are marvels of artistic control with intricate, colorful designs. https://www.allrecipes.com/article/how-to-decorate-pysanky-ukrainian-easter-eggs/

This year we are decorating eggs with the young ‘uns, and there will be no PAAS kits. Sadly, we will never approach the beauty of Pysanky eggs, because we lack skills and patience, but we are going to over-saturate some eggs with lots of food colors, wielding some white Cray-Pas oil pastels (or white crayons, which might be easier for tiny hands to manipulate) in our mid-twenty-first century attempt to decorate eggs with a wax resist.
https://www.myfrugalhome.com/how-to-dye-easter-eggs-without-a-kit/

I am bringing some white gel pens to the decorating table, because they dry fast, and resist smudging. And also some washable markers, because half of the fun of dyeing eggs is dyeing your fingers, too.

More homemade easter eggs without a kit:
https://studiodiy.com/how-to-dye-easter-eggs-with-food-coloring/

Don’t feel you have to be all-springy and Martha-y with your Easter egg designs. Flowers are nice, but so are stripes, and flames, and rabbits, and strands of spaghetti. Roz Chast, the New Yorker cartoonist, has started branching out from print to her own version of Pysanky eggs, and you can, too: https://carolcoreyfineart.com/artworks/categories/1/831-roz-chast-beach-2022/

I saw the ultimate Easter basket indignity at Target last week: Decorated plastic eggs, which were already filled with candy. How lazy can you get? Have some fun, save some money, and decorate the eggs yourself. Keep a fresh bowl of jelly beans around at all times to provide energy and inspiration. And be sure you have a stash of yellow chick Peeps getting stale on top of the fridge; along about Memorial Day they will be good and crunchy, at the peak of perfection.

And once all those eggs have been discovered, here are some ideas for recycling them: https://www.bonappetit.com/recipes/slideshow/how-to-cook-leftover-easter-eggs

“Hard-boiled eggs are wonderful when they’re really done right. I bring the water to a boil, and then I put in the eggs. And then I boil them for – well, it depends on the size of the egg – maybe eight minutes.”
– Alice Waters