Spring has sprung, Easter is just around the corner, and soon, you may find yourself awash in left over brightly colored eggs and wondering what to do with them.
Kids love to decorate eggs at Easter and it makes for a wonderful and entertaining family activity. My own childhood Easter memories are a kaliedoscopic swirl of green, purple, and pink fingertips and the sharp smell of vinegar. Egg coloring in my day was fraught with difficulty. Fortunately, nowadays, a bazillion different sorts of less messy and far less stinky egg coloring and decorating kits have flooded the market that make it easier even for little ones to get into the act.
Still, no matter which method you choose, most of them involve coloring and hiding real hard boiled eggs, which carries some degree of risk. If you intend to eat the eggs after the hunt, there’s the obvious, real danger of food poisoning. Eating eggs left hidden by the E.B. in the ‘wild’ on a warm spring day and found later by some happy little egg hunter, dropped in the dirt, dusted off, plopped into a pretty basket, and carted around in the warm Spring sunshine for another period of time is not the healthiest, safest idea. Then there’s the other risk–that the happy little hunter won’t find all the eggs, which will sit, safely hidden, as the warm spring turns to hot summer for someone’s sandal-shod foot to discover about the 4th of July!
Pheewwww!
To my way of thinking, it’s fine, in fact wonderful, to color eggs with the kids, but don’t hide them. Instead, keep them in the fridge until you’re to ready to eat them with your Easter picnic, brunch, or feast. A bowl of brightly-colored eggs on the table makes for a beautiful centerpiece and they’ll be safe for diners to peel and eat.
Hide plastic eggs or homemade cascarones instead; just as much fun, but you’ll risk no stinky, ugly surprises come mid-summer.
Now, for those left over hard boiled eggs, here’s a recipe for my sister’s delicious Egg Salad, first published in Mike’s book, Thin So Fast. It’s great stuffed into a tomato, wrapped in a low carb tortilla, or scooped up onto celery sticks or jicama slices. Just be sure to make it with eggs that haven’t visited the backyard recently. Making it with their (safely refrigerated) Easter eggs will make it so egg-stra special that kids may even eat it!
Egg Salad
Serves 4
8 hardboiled eggs
2 tablespoons chopped black olives
1 teaspoon minced onion
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1 tablespoon chopped dill pickle
2 tablespoons mayonnaise (preferably homemade from good oil)
1 tablespoon Dijon-style mustard
Peel and chop the eggs, mix in all remaining ingredients until well combined.
Protein per serving: 12.4 grams
Effective carbohydrate per serving: 1.5 grams
And to all: Happy Easter! Happy Passover! Happy Spring!