Bunnies and Ham and Eggs, Oh My!

BY TAWRA KELLAM

It’s almost that time of year again. You’re standing, dumbfounded, in front of a mound of hard boiled eggs, sliced ham and chocolate Easter bunnies. You wonder "what am I going to do with 6 dozen eggs, 6 lbs. of ham and 25 chocolate bunnies". The stress of it is almost enough to send you to bed for a week--or at least tear most of your hair out. Here are a few ideas and recipes from www.notjustbeans.com to help you avoid both of those.

Leftover Bunnies: Take a rolling pin to them and crush the life out of them. Then use the crumbs to sprinkle on ice cream, use in milk shakes, stir a few in a mug of hot chocolate, use in place of chocolate chips for making cookies or melt for dipping fruit and candy.

Leftover Ham: Save bone for bean or split pea soup. Make ham salad, chef salad or ham sandwiches. Chop and freeze to use in: potato salad, scrambled eggs, omelets, to top baked potatoes, for potato soup, scalloped potatoes, au gratin potatoes, pasties or pizza- with pineapple.

Top tortilla with ham, salsa, and cheddar cheese and warm, for hot ham and cheese sandwiches.

Leftover Eggs: Make potato salad, tuna salad, pasta salad, chef salad, spinach salad with eggs and bacon, deviled eggs, golden morning sunshine or fill tomatoes with egg salad.

Easter Egg Dyes

Yellow yellow onion skins, turmeric (½ tsp. per cup water), chamomile, sage, celery leaves

Orange any yellow dye plus beet juice

Red beets, safflower seeds, paprika, rose hip tea

Blue blackberries, grape juice concentrate, red cabbage

Brown black tea, white oak, juniper berry, coffee, barberry

Light purple blackberries, grapes, violets

Green alfalfa, spinach, kale, violet blossom plus ¼ tsp. baking soda, tansy, nettle, chervil, sorrel, parsley, carrot tops, beet tops or dip yellow egg in blue dye

Khaki-green red onion skin

Hard boil eggs with 1 tsp. vinegar in the water. Place dying ingredients in non-aluminum pans, cover with water and boil 5 minutes to 1 hour depending on what ingredients you use. Use enough material to make at least 1 cup dye. Crush ingredients as they boil to extract as much dye as possible. Strain the dye. Most dyes should be used hot. Let each egg sit in the dye until it reaches the desired color. Some dyes will take longer than others to make the desired colored on the egg. Remove the egg and let dry.

© Copyright 2002 Tawra Kellam

 

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Author:

Tawra Kellam is the author of the frugal cookbook Not Just Beans: 50 Years of Frugal Family Favorites. Not Just Beans is a frugal cookbook which has over 540 recipes and 400 tips. For more free tips and recipes visit our website at www.notjustbeans.com