There are four pots on the stove. One contains beetroot, another kale leaves. There are onion peels in the third and the smallest holds turmeric powder. The pots are all filled with boiling water, in an attempt to extract the colour from each ingredient.
Or so we think.
A pungent scent makes us realise we’ve forgotten to add water to one pot. The onion peels are charred. They stick to the spatula as we scrape them from the bottom of the pot. So much for getting that deep rusty red; now, we would only get charcoal.
Why are we going to such lengths, you may ask? Well, in these confined times, it is important to find ways to busy ourselves.
This could mean finally getting around to cracking the pristine spines of books bought years ago. It could mean assembling a 1,000-piece puzzle with loved ones, playing board games or finally watching the show Money Heist that everyone's been raving about. It could also mean trying something you've never done before.
Like painting Easter eggs.
People were decorating eggs well before the celebration of Easter began. In Africa, ostrich eggs were painted and engraved with patterns more than 50,000 years ago. In ancient Sumer and Egypt, eggs of silver and gold were laid out in graves and were usually associated with death, rebirth and kingship. Early Christians in Mesopotamia then adopted the tradition, painting eggs with red dye to symbolise Christ’s crucifixion. Over the years, the custom became a staple to mark Easter Sunday.
In short, this practice of decorating eggs is ancient. So we decided to try our hand at the age-old custom. After applying for a permit, I went to the supermarket to pick out some eggs, patterned napkins, twine and vegetables that make good dyes.
“Don’t forget the flowers and the food colouring,” my better half, Sona, calls out to remind me.
“There’s no need, we’ll go natural. Purple from beets, green from kale and yellow from turmeric. From onions, we’ll get a nice reddish brown,” I say, my voice muffled by the surgical mask.
“You never know,” Sona says.
“It’ll work,” I argue. “We’ll get nicer colours from the vegetables. It’ll be more interesting, especially with the leaf prints.”
“Get food colouring, Raz,” she says. I relent, figuring the end result will prove me right, anyway.
It doesn’t. The colour of the boiling water changes but the eggs themselves refuse to dye, even though we’d kept them boiling in the pots for the necessary 15 minutes. The kale doesn’t give us any green, and the eggs that come out of that pot look the same as they did when they went in. The beetroot gives us pale red instead of purple, and make the eggs look like they are rotten. The turmeric gives us a yellow that looks more the colour of jaundice than a crayon. The onions, as you know, only make the kitchen reek.
So we turned to the dependable food dyes. The eggs by then had been boiled, so we couldn’t steep them in boiling water again lest they crack. So we filled three bowls with water and colouring (red, green and yellow) and waited.
Our mishaps aside, there are a number of ways to decorate eggs. You can just dye them as solid colours and, for the most part, they’ll look pretty nice. But if you want something a little more crafty, here are four techniques we tried.
Floral appliques
For this one, you’ll need gauze, flowers and / or leaves, and an old pair of stockings. Take an egg and place a flower or petal on its surface, and hold it in place as you wrap gauze tight around one face of the egg. Once it is held in place, pick another flower or leaf and do the same. You can place as many leaves and flowers on the egg as you want, just make sure they are positioned directly on the egg’s surface and not caught between layers of gauze.
Once you’ve wrapped your egg in a thin layer of gauze, cut the fabric from the roll and then cut the end lengthwise to make two strings which you can loop around the egg and tie in a knot. Once you have your flowery, gauze-wrapped egg, encase the whole thing in an old stocking and dip it in a bowl of warm water mixed with a dye of your choice.
After leaving it for an hour or so, remove the egg from the bowl and cut the gauze away. You’ll notice that the flowers have stuck on the surface. You can peel them off and be left with an imprint, but I think leaving them on makes for a more interesting look.
Note: I can tell you from experience that you shouldn't hold the egg too tightly as you wrap it with the gauze.
Prints and patterns
This technique is courtesy of Sona. Crack an egg and pour its white into a bowl. Then get a bunch of colourful, patterned napkins and cut them however you want. You can cut around the patterns if you like, and then glue the cut-outs on to the egg with a brush dipped in the egg white. Make sure to brush the cut-outs on the egg surface gently, lest you tear the napkin.
Once the egg white dries, you’ll notice that the napkin is left glued to the egg's surface.
Note: You can also cut the napkins into little squares and stick them like patchwork on to the egg.
Pen a portrait
This one is arguably the most fun. First, think of some familiar faces you'd like to draw, whether from paintings, movies, TV shows, video games or even your emoji library. Having finally gotten around to seeing La Casa De Papel (Money Heist), I knew I had to try my hand at drawing a Salvador Dali mask on one of the eggs.
Make sure you first sketch an outline of your portrait with a pencil, before taking a Sharpie to it. You can also use a felt-tip pen for the thinner lines, to give some contrast. But be careful – unlike Sharpie drawing, those made with a felt-tip can smudge.
On a string
Finally, we have the twine and steeping technique. This one is straightforward enough. Grab a roll of twine and gently but firmly tie loops around the egg. Start by making one loop around the width of the egg, then do another a few centimetres down, until you run string across its length and back again. Just imagine you’re drawing a large asterisk across the egg with twine. Once you’ve added as much string as you want, steep your eggs into a bowl of warm water mixed with dye for an hour.
Once the egg dries, cut the twine off and you’ll be left with an interesting orbital imprint on the egg’s surface.
