The Bunny Surprise

This morning I posted one of my favourite images for this time of year and mentioned that I don't have one that includes Ramadan, for years like this one where it overlaps also.  A friend provided this:

It would be better to have a Muslim symbol on the
hat of the third one, but I don't have skills to add it.

I decided to make some surprises for my parents, which is easier now that I live close and don't have to sneak in their kitchen.  However, my kitchen is not fully put together and I wasn't sure I could accomplish anything.  Then some colleagues and I were talking on Friday about weekend plans, and one said he'd be with family with an egg hunt and so on.  The conversation wandered to dyeing eggs (some of us not having had plastic ones in childhood) and one mentioned the wire egg dippers.  The others assured him they are still included in the Paas® packages.

So we wandered down the website and I noticed one option uses foam to dye the eggs.  I mentioned that I've seen the same sort of thing done with shaving cream, found a link to instructions, and it also mentioned using frozen whipped topping.  This might be more food-safe than shaving cream.

And it gave me an idea.

A quick stop at the local grocery scored the last set of multicolour liquid dyes (I debated getting a set of gel dyes instead, or just making one-colour eggs, but decided on multi, and didn't want to deal with diluting the gels) and a small carton of generic frozen whipped topping.  I put the topping into the refrigerator to thaw overnight.  Then I followed the basic instructions as follows:

Whipped topping spread in a dish - about half the carton.

The dyes I was able to buy.

 

You drop the dye onto the whipped topping, and swirl it with a toothpick or something similar.  I was rather orderly in my dropping because I worried about the colours blending too much if I dropped randomly.  They blended enough as I rolled the eggs in the coloured whipped topping:

Rolling a boiled egg in the dyed topping -
yes, I made sure to wear a glove.

After this, I put the eggs on a plate and left them for about a half-hour.  The instructions you find vary with how much time to leave them, and I got distracted a bit, so this is definitely the high end of waiting.  I had enough of the dyed topping for another half-dozen eggs but I'd only boiled six.

After the time I rinsed them off, using another glove to hold them.  It was tricky to photograph one-handed so I didn't.  I do have comparison plates of the eggs before and after:

  

I should have put a cloth or paper on the plate with the rinsed eggs, because they rolled and didn't stay in precisely the same places on the plate.  I was a bit concerned because the first one came out very pastel, but the others are fairly bright.  The green doesn't appear very much, even though it was quite prominent in the topping.  As you can see, what the whipped topping shows is not what appears on the egg, so it was fun to see how they ended up looking.

I also, although my kitchen isn't quite set up and I couldn't find all the ingredients (I know I need to buy a couple), made some carrot muffins this morning.  I wrapped up two and put them into a fruit box with the eggs (four are on the bottom so you cannot see them) and a note for my parents:

As I left my house I added a daisy from a plant in front.  I put it on the table on their front porch, right in front of one of the kitchen windows, with the note to the window.  I am sure to hear about it when they are up and moving.

I've done some other cooking, mostly simple things due to time and not having the kitchen comfortably established, which I may post about separately.  I'm making progress on unpacking and getting things in useful configurations.  With the help of a member of the local Veterans Club, who do small chores to raise money for their projects, the three biggest furniture items were put together and installed, so now my clothes can be put away and organized.  I purchased some organizer things for the kitchen, and that will be much of today's project once the clothes are put away.