Plant-based dye for coloring Celebration Eggs

I am wondering if it’s okay to celebrate with eggs and bunnies dyed with harmful artificial dyes and ingredients; hmm so commercial a thought but not rare because many grocery stores are already bombarding our minds with artificially colored pretty bunny celebration items and most families are already buying just that---- celebrating with artificially dyed eggs; well it’s just the egg shells that is painted but do you ever wonder if some traces of dye could wind up in the actual eggs going into your mouth. Many kinds of dyes are available at the grocery stores to buy and use for coloring the shells of the eggs and for many kids and family this is a yearly enjoyable affair. And I know is another bunny and egg celebration time.

But for food safety and health we want to help you make a more conscious choice since we do have a choice as to what colors to use to decorate our eggs without the headache that comes with using artificial dyes. An alternative choice will be to use nontoxic  plant-based dye, free of harmful ingredients considering your loved one’s will be decorating and eating these eggs; I do recommend you try some of these ideas below.

Making colorful homemade celebration eggs is easy and fun; to turn an eggshell into colorful red egg, soak eggs into some raw beets juice or cranberry juice and vinegar for about an hour; then let it dry without rinsing.

For Yellow color, soak shelled eggs into turmeric powder or turmeric juice; this will color your eggs almost immediately because the yellow pigment found in turmeric are intense and do stick on easily and it is also hardly washed. So be cautious when using turmeric; wear a cooking apron and glove when doing this if you don’t want the color left on your hands and cloth.

For a green color, try soaking the shelled eggs in raw spinach juice water, add vinegar and a few teaspoons of turmeric to get a gorgeous lemon like green.

To get a blue color, boil eggs with shells in red cabbage juice and a little vinegar.

Also, you can try using pure natural henna dye by Jamila and Henna by Jaipur (Rajasthan) to create more intense color on your eggs, henna decorating is common with Indians.

Author:
Onyinye A is a freelance writer who specializes in nontoxic self improvement, green & Eco-friendly living, nontoxic lifestyle (preventing cancer, illness and toxicity) and everything related to organic living. Her work has been published by nontoxiclifestyle.org, Ezine.com, and other online and print publications.