07 April 2012

98/366 vegetable dyes


Kitchen chemistry today. I used BHG's All-Natural Dye Recipes to make some egg dyes for Sweetpea. I threw my own kale and spinach combo into the mix. So far it's not working well—more of a light olive green than a true green—but I'll let it sit overnight and see what happens. The rest are doing very well!


Our biggest surprise was the red cabbage. The dye bath was such a reddish purple, I thought for sure we'd have purple eggs instead of blue. But we checked after an hour or so and the eggs were definitely blue! Crazy chemistry. Did you know that red cabbage is a pH indicator? Future science experiment. . . 


After a while, I figured out that we wouldn't get even coloring unless the eggs were fully submerged in the dye baths. I transferred all the eggs to drinking glasses and covered them with the dyes. We'll probably have some inconsistencies where the eggs touch each other, but it should be better than the shallow dishes.

I'll post our results tomorrow!