2024, Food, holidays, home, Technology

Egg-citing!

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Last month, after my egg run down to the farm, I delivered a couple dozen to PJ.  We spent a nice hour chatting and I don’t think we talked about eggs once.

Then as I was leaving, Hans came down and when we told him I had delivered eggs, he starting telling me about his little egg cooker.  It wasn’t long before I was in the kitchen and he was demonstrating the various parts.  (There aren’t actually that many parts, so it was a short demonstration.)   It seemed very intriguing and with the internet at my fingers, I had ordered one before I knew it!

It’s a fabulous little contraption.  It makes soft boiled and hard boiled as well as omelets and poached, if you want to use one of the little plates that are part of the kit.  And it’s extraordinarily easy.  I’ve been using it pretty regularly – mostly for soft boiled eggs, which I haven’t had for years since I can never get them just right using a pot of water.  I also made a few hard boiled with eggs from the farm and got the brightest orangey-yellow egg salad I’ve ever had.

Unfortunately I can’t use it for the dyed eggs this weekend.  The cooker requires a teeny pin prick in the top of each egg and that pin prick will let all kinds of dye into the eggs when they are submerged.  Oh well, not the end of the world and my little cooker won’t be side-lined long!

Thanks for PJ and Hans for introducing me to my latest kitchen gadget!

When was the last time you dyed eggs?

23 thoughts on “Egg-citing!”

  1. I didn’t think I could remember the last time, but suddenly I had a flash of memory. We dyed eggs at work with the people I worked with once. Of course, they weren’t able to help with the boiling water, but they were able to dip eggs in dyes once they were cooled. One client was blind, one had the use of only one hand, and one was pretty unpredictable (throwing an egg wasn’t out of the question), so it was a hands-on egg dying experience.

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    2. Rise and Shine Baboons,

      I do not remember the last time, but I’ll bet that whenever it was, it was not happy. I did not ever dye eggs with my son when he was little because I disliked the process so much, and I would get so tired of eating hard boiled eggs in the period following Easter.

      I remember egg-dying as my mother at her worst. She would try to control the entire operation rigidly. All I wanted to do was to try out my own artistic instincts and express myself. She wanted the egg dying to be perfect as intructed on the package, leaving no room for artistic expression. And right there was our entire relationship played out over Easter egg dye. Mom wanted control. I wanted to independently do my own thing. Conflict ensued.

      OT–March feels familiar. Finally. Erratic weather, Boys Basketball Tournament snow, cancelled plans. Today I am sorting all the reports and paper gathered during Lou’s last 5 weeks of a health crisis, scanning them, filing them. Then I start submitting needed diagnoses. Having a nasty snowstorm keeping me focused on the tasks because I can’t really go anywhere is a gift.

      Anybody here with any expertise with the Veteran’s system? Lou never got an answer about qualifying for service from the VA. He served 7 months in the Navy Officer Corps but was honorably discharged due to poor eyesight. Then he served 6 years in the Army REserve from which he was honorably discharged, but the answer to “Is he a veteran?” Is always, “We don’t know.” I am scanning his records and sending them to our Senators for clarification. He may need their services.

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  4. It has been years since I dyed eggs, probably when daughter was younger. We have a large Ukrainian population here, so you see pysanky quite often. Best friend in Howard Lake went to a pysanky class a few weeks ago and loved it. I hope she keeps it up.

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    1. I don’t usually do pysanky at this time of year, which is strange since that’s when everyone else does them. I don’t have any reason, just fell out of the habit doing so many but the Christmas holidays. Suppose I could if I wanted!

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  5. Me? Maybe when I was 11 or 12. My wife was into Ukrainian Easter Egg decorating maybe 40 years ago, so that’s the last time I was anywhere near dying eggs. But those eggs are truly art. Pretty cool to see some of the best examples made by experts.

    Chris in Owatonna

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  6. YA has a personality quirk that she will say no to something and say she doesn’t have any interest but then, when push comes to shove, she’s in. Egg dying is a perfect example of this. If I say to her “when do you want to dye eggs” or “do you want to dye eggs”, she’ll say she doesn’t want to. But then when I set up the dyes and start doing them myself, she’s right there and does at least half. So we’ve been doing dyed eggs for years because of this. I might do them by myself because it’s fun and silly but I don’t have to since YA always steps up to the plate 

    I almost always do a nice batch of deviled eggs at this time of year.

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  7. I took a short course in making pysanky back in 1975, and for a few years after that, I made a batch or two of them for Easter. Otherwise I have never dyed eggs. I can imagine that perhaps food shortages and rationing in the years following WWII may have been a contributing factor. Nobody that I knew dyed eggs for Easter, at least not that I was aware of.

    I showed Hans the blog, he says “Hi, to all.”

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  10. I’m pretty sure we dyed eggs last year. As a matter of fact, now I think about it I remember dyeing eggs with the grandkids at their house last year. But we dye a few eggs somewhere most years.

    The last few Easters we have hosted a breakfast/brunch for our kids and grandkids at our house. Activities included an egg hunt but the eggs were plastic ones and filled with chocolate eggs or jellybeans or a quarter and the hunt is most often in the house because the weather is seldom conducive to an outdoor hunt. We haven’t planned a breakfast this year, but then neither has anyone else in the family. We’re old. Isn’t about time we can just show up as guests?

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  11. I haven’t actually dyed eggs with dye for more than fifty years, I suppose. I used to save onion skins and drop them in the water when I boiled eggs. It turns them a nice yellowish brown. Itried using beet juice to dye eggs, too, but I don’t recallthat it was very successful.

    The cooker in the header photo is an update on an older design. I have a little ceramic one, but it has a vintage look to it. I don’t know how old it is – got it at a thrift shop. You don’t have to poke any holes in the eggs, but I don’t think they would dye perfectly because the cooking process leaves a bit of a ring on the shell. The part of the egg that starts out in water gets mineral deposits, I think.

    There is a little sticker on it that says Japan.

    Here’s what it looks like:

    egg cooker2

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