• No one must decorate an egg for himself/herself.
• A list is made of everyone who will be attending, whether searching or not, and one egg is decorated for each of them. Several extras are decorated as well.
• After the hunt, the winner is the person with the most eggs in her/his basket. However, any egg with a name on it is given to the person whose name it bears, and anyone who arrived unexpectedly and does not have one gets to choose an egg or two from the non-name-bearing eggs. After the egg-admiring, all eggs are immediately put in the fridge to be safe from food poisoning until it's time to go home.

That way, we were never stuck with a whole dozen hard-boiled eggs while my sisters each had two eggs with their names on it but a cousin had none. It's fun.

[ March 26, 2005, 12:59 PM: Message edited by: ketchupqueen ]
 

---

Posted by beverly (Member # 6246) on :
 
We always did any "secular" celebrating (bunnies, candy, eggs, hunts, whatever) on the Saturday before Easter. Easter Sunday itself was focused on the actual story of Easter.

Of course there is also usually a large family gathering featuring a ham-feast.
 

---

Posted by Noemon (Member # 1115) on :
 
Kama, that's really interesting. I'd never heard of priests blessing Easter eggs before. Dag (or others who are or have been US Catholics) is that done in the US?
 

---

Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
 
I haven't heard of it. My Grandmother was from Poland, but I don't think she celebrated any of the cultural aspects with my Mom's family.

Dagonee
 

---

Posted by Kama (Member # 3022) on :
 
It's not just eggs that are blessed. You prepare a basket with food: bread, salt, meat (sausage or ham), eggs, horseradish (no idea why), traditionally also some sweets (sugar lambs). Then, on Easter Sunday, you share the food with family.

Bread is for the bread Christ shared with his disciples; meat is the symbol for the Lamb of God; eggs are the new life.

I think it is a Polish only tradition. I'm not sure about Russian orthodox, I have a vague memory of them doing it as well.
 

---

Posted by Kama (Member # 3022) on :
 
ah. horse radish symbolises the bitterness of Christ's pain.
 

---

Posted by mothertree (Member # 4999) on :
 
Horseradish seems to be a passover thing too We sometimes get new clothes on easter. And easter candy. I've been trying to tell my kids that if they don't clean the livingroom, the buuny won't bring them anything. My husband is really into bunnies and santas and fairies, but I think since I'm just going along with it I tend to mess it up.
 

---

Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
 
I've only been to one seder, but I seem to remember a part of the litany included bitter herbs, and it symbolized the bitterness of slavery in Egypt.
 

---

Posted by ketchupqueen (Member # 6877) on :
 
I have been to several Seders. I really enjoy them.
 

---

Posted by Ela (Member # 1365) on :
 
It just occurred to me that I could actually eat Easter candy this year, as Passover doesn't coincide with Easter as it often does.


 

---

Posted by Theca (Member # 1629) on :
 
I found an old easter egg coloring kit. It just has 2 colors left. Maybe I'll go buy some eggs and boil them tonite and color them on Sunday. That would be fun. Kind of late, I know, but hey. I love coloring Easter Eggs.
 

---

Posted by ketchupqueen (Member # 6877) on :
 
I hate those kits. Good old-fashioned crayons and food coloring/vinegar dye for us.

[ March 26, 2005, 11:55 PM: Message edited by: ketchupqueen ]
 

---

Posted by Theca (Member # 1629) on :
 
Oh, this is just a simple kit. All the stupid stickers and so on have already been thrown out. But it doesn't even need vinegar, which is nice, because I haven't got any. Just the color tablet and warm water. I think one year I used pickle juice out of desperation. That worked pretty well, I think.

How much food coloring does it take to make it with vinagar, anyway? My mom never told me food coloring would work so we always bought the kits.
 

---

Posted by Jaiden (Member # 2099) on :
 
Kama, it is mainly a polish thing...
The Polish Catholic churches around my area do it. (My grandmother was polish and so tradition is for us to bring food to be blessed).
Priests who are not Polish will do it as well if you ask them
 

---

Posted by Goody Scrivener (Member # 6742) on :
 
The more food color you put in, the stronger your color will be. So it's up to you. I know that the McCormick boxes of 4 colors that we normally buy do have "use this many drops of these colors to make these other colors", so you could use that as a guide if you have a box with those kind of markings. Otherwise, I'd say trial and error. (I'd transcribe what mine says but at some point it got soaked in red dye and is currently unreadable.)
 

---

Posted by ketchupqueen (Member # 6877) on :
 
It's 1 tsp. white vinegar to 1/2 cup boiling water, with 20 drops food coloring for fairly deep dyes, less for pastels, although you want to use 30 or 35 for a good deep red dye, otherwise it's just dark pink. For mixed colors, generally mix between 15 and 17 drops of a lighter color with 3 to 5 of the darker to get the secondary colors. We always try purple, and neither by using the mix suggested on the box nor by tinkering with it do you get a nice purple dye; I think I'm going to give up on making it. It always turns grey. It's better just to dye red, then blue; that usually results in a very nice purple egg.
 

---

Posted by Theca (Member # 1629) on :
 
That sounds like fun. I'll have to try it next year. I'm moving in a week, so I certainly don't want to buy any food coloring or vinegar this year.
 

---

Posted by Theca (Member # 1629) on :
 
I just realized. I don't even know how long it takes to boil an egg! I'm guessing ten minutes.
 

---

Posted by Bob_Scopatz (Member # 1227) on :
 
You're supposed to boil the eggs!

Man, this Christianity stuff is hard.


 

---

Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
 

quote:

---

I just realized. I don't even know how long it takes to boil an egg! I'm guessing ten minutes.

---

The best way I've found is to cover the eggs with cold water - about enough to cover them by at least 3 inches.

Place the pot on the stove and turn on high. As soon as it starts boiling, turn it off but leave on the burner until it cools. Very good for avoiding cracks in the eggs.

Dagonee
 

---

Posted by Elizabeth (Member # 5218) on :
 
"Man, this Christianity stuff is hard."

So, what are you saying, then, Bob, that the Jewish religion is soft? That Buddhism is overly easy? Islam, scrambled?
 

---

Posted by quidscribis (Member # 5124) on :
 
Nice!
 

---

Posted by Bob_Scopatz (Member # 1227) on :
 
I'm saying you can't have a God without breaking a few eggs.
 

---

Posted by Teshi (Member # 5024) on :
 
Theca, if you do it the "put the eggs in hot water" way, it's five/six minutes for soft-boiled and ten/eleven for hard-boiled.

I don't have any eggs .
 

---

Posted by ketchupqueen (Member # 6877) on :
 
Eggs are $0.50 a dozen at Target, if you have a Target Super near you. And this is how I did it: lightly salted cold water to cover plus a little extra, bring just to a boil, remove from heat, let stand covered 20 minutes, remove eggs to bowl of cold water (my mom runs cold water over them in the sink in a colander), then, when mostly cool, set in egg carton to dry. When completely cooled, refrigerate until ready to dye. I didn't have one cracked egg. My mom always said you never boil an egg; they're hard-cooked, not really hard-boiled. She doesn't like the way they taste when you hard-boil them.
 

---

Posted by Teshi (Member # 5024) on :
 
I would invest in eggs but there's no way I can eat six of them, let alone a dozen!
 

---

Posted by ketchupqueen (Member # 6877) on :
 
You could give them to your neighbors. And you don't cook? There are many recipes using eggs on the Jatraquero Recipe Site.

[ March 27, 2005, 02:30 PM: Message edited by: ketchupqueen ]
 

---

Posted by Elizabeth (Member # 5218) on :
 
"I'm saying you can't have a God without breaking a few eggs."

Shir, Bob. If you say so.
 

---

Posted by Teshi (Member # 5024) on :
 
I don't have any cooking utensils, like saucepans and such, so I can't cook.
 

---

Posted by ketchupqueen (Member # 6877) on :
 
How do you live?

Do we need to take up a collection?
 

---

Posted by Teshi (Member # 5024) on :
 
Heh. Don't panic! I am a student living in residence, with a meal-plan . Any extra food I need I use the communal microwave, fridge or oven .
 

---

Posted by ketchupqueen (Member # 6877) on :
 
If you have a knife, a cutting board, an oven and a baking dish, you can make many things.

I still can't believe you don't have anything to cook with, though. Wow.
 

---

Posted by maui babe (Member # 1894) on :
 

quote:

---

Eggs are $0.50 a dozen at Target

---

Yeah, right! I'm lucky if I can get eggs for $2.50 a dozen at any time.

Also, KQ, I found it odd that you wouldn't want a "whole dozen" colored eggs in your refrigerator after Easter. When I was a child, we had so much fun coloring eggs that we would always do 5 or 6 dozen every year. And we always ate them all (or my mother would never have let us do so many). We would certainly be sick of hard boiled eggs after about a week, but I don't remember any of us (there were three children in my family) complaining.

As a parent, I let my 6 children decorate 3 or 4 dozen eggs (this was obviously before I moved to Hawaii where eggs are so expensive). They didn't enjoy it as much as I did, and I wasn't as tolerant of the mess as my mother was, so after a while, I started filling plastic eggs for the Easter egg hunts and skipping the coloring all together. Also, only one of my children would eat hard boiled eggs, so there was that issue too.
 

---

Posted by Dan_raven (Member # 3383) on :
 
Don't forget--Egg Salad!

And Potato Salad. When Easter Eggs end up going with you on the first Spring Picnic.

And Tomaine, when old Easter Eggs return, again and Again. But we won't get into that right now.

("I loved that beautiful Green Easter egg in your icebox." "What Easter egg. I haven't bought eggs in a year.")

[ March 28, 2005, 05:33 PM: Message edited by: Dan_raven ]
 

---

Posted by maui babe (Member # 1894) on :
 
Psst... Dan, it's "ptomaine"...

And nowadays, we'd probably call it Salmonella or Shigella .


 

---