The Boring Word About Colored Eggs

April 2, 1986

Now that Easter is over and the kids are coming down from their sugar high, we can concentrate on the dilemma of what to do with all the hard cooked eggs.

There are a few eggs we’re not allowed to eat because of the very special care that went into their unique creative color (dipped in every container) and even after putting all the stepped on, dropped and dog investigated eggs in the trash we have enough left to make egg salad sandwiches through Memorial Day.

Every year I think of limiting the number of eggs we are going to color but somehow I always get coaxed into “just a few more.” This year we had to try the new scented colors and after adding magic crystals to the boiling water and choking on the banana yellow, mint green, strawberry red, chocolate, orange and bubble gum blue powder we vacated the house while the aroma subsided. (I should have known, the instructions included a caution to store colored eggs in a closed container.) One good aspect of this coloring is that the eggs are easy to find – just sniff them out.

Each year there seems to be some new kit or method. We had little pellets one year that were supposed to work with tap water – those eggs turned out speckled. Another season there were pictured sleeves to put around the eggs before dipping in boiling water – our’s never went on straight and our scenes were always lopsided. Of course we also have to choose between Disney and Sesame Street holders, stickers, punch-outs, carts, mountains, castles and the old standby crayons.

On Easter we have at least a half dozen egg hunts at all hours of the day and night, inside and outside. I always pray the egg count will turn out the same after each hunt. Nothing like finding a hidden egg two weeks later.

This year – a sign of aging children and adults – it was the kids who hid the eggs and the grown ups who crawled across the lawn on hands and knees looking under clumps of grass and bushes.

As I looked around the table on Easter at the blue, red and yellow folded hands I couldn’t help but add – “and thank you for colored eggs.”

CCW