Ok, so it may be lightly snowing outside, but it is the first day of Spring today! So, Happy Spring!
K and I spent the morning coloring eggs, eating eggs, and talking egg talk 
I am impressed with the colors that we got. We used Turmeric for the yellow, grape juice concentrate for the purples and blues, spinach and parsley for the really light greens and a mix of other things for the inbetween colors.
Yesterday I harvested a bunch of Chickweed from my bro-in-laws land and made some chickweed pesto and yummy green drinks. Tonight, we will have pesto and pasta and probably some eggs! I also picked up some chocolate eggs this morning, so when T gets home we will hide some for K to find. Our own little tribute to the rebirth of Spring!
Here is the recipe for the absolutely, splendidly, scrumptiously, yummy Chickweed Pesto:
- Place 4 cloves garlic and a handful of walnuts in a blender and chop ‘em up
- Add some olive oil (~1/4 cup), feta or parmasean (~1/2 cup) and lots of chickweed(~3 cups), and blend until mixed well.
- Taste and see if there is anything missing and adjust to taste
You can use this as you would any other pesto, and it freezes well.
For the green drink, I put ~4 cups of apple juice in a blender and added a~1 cup of chickweed, 1/4cup of parsley and a handfull of blueberries and blended well. MMmmmmm. Yummy!!
looks delicious and sounds yummy! Happy Spring!
Those eggs look great. And I think I knew that one could eat chickweed, but didn’t know exactly what one would do WITH it, so now I know! I do know that our ducks love it! It’s one of the only “weeds” that they will eat out of the garden. (Tender young lettuce seedlings, they’ll go for, though, without hesitation!)
The eggs look lovely! How did you get the stripes (with wax)?
The chickweed pesto sounds yummy…now I have to go out and see if I’ve got any in my yard. I’ve decided not to cut my yard to see what ‘weeds’ come up! It’s getting to the point that I might be able to start identifying some things…but its also getting to the point where things are beginning to look messy to my eye….I know its all a matter of training…so I’m just going to let it go on for a while! 🙂
Actually, the strips were an ‘oops’ that turned out pretty cool. I had put rubber bands around some of the eggs that I boiled with Turmeric. So, they left marks on some of the yellow eggs, and left the rubber bands yellow. Then, I used the same rubber bands on the eggs that I put in with the spinach, hoping they would have a good effect on the green. Instead, the turmeric left strips on the eggs. Cool, eh?
I’m curious as to how you go about dying the eggs naturally. Do you still put vinegar in with the water with the turmeric, grape juice ect? Do you hardboil the eggs with the dyes? I should do a search on the ‘net, but your eggs are so lovely, so I’ll just ask! 🙂
Gina, I actually forgot to put the vinegar in until the green ones, which didn’t even turn out so good.
So, I hard boiled some eggs in water and let them cool. Those I put in grape juice and pickled beet juice.
The ones I hard boiled at the same time as coloring were eggs with turmeric (~2 Tbsp), eggs wtih Red onion skins and Hibiscus flower, and eggs with spinach and parsley.
I put some of the eggs in more than one color, like a tumeric egg in grape juice to get a greenish color.
I mostly followed these directions http://chemistry.about.com/library/weekly/aa042003a.htm except for forgetting about the vinegar.
Have fun!
(I’m already sick of egg salad!)