The Chicken or the egg? Or....what to do with all of those Easter Eggs!
Since it's very likely that birds evolved from dinosaurs, now what came first, the dinosaur or the egg? If you want to get into that kind of 'heady' stuff you can look here or here. I'm just glad that we have chickens and eggs and I'll leave it at that!
I decided to dye some eggs for the Easter table using the same method I used last year - which is putting bits of flowers and leaves on the hardboiled eggs, covering them with onion skins and then wrapping them carefully in nylon stocking, cheesecloth or muslin. You can read the entire process in my post from last year. Flowers aren't very abundant in the garden just yet since Easter is early this year, but I do have some dwarf iris blooming (I added a small vase of them above), crocus and even some parsley growing in the garden.
The bits of blue in the colored eggs are from the iris petals.
So the next time you start wondering what came first, or what to do with all the dyed eggs left from Easter, make egg salad! There is a great little local cafe in town called Beans and Barley that makes the best egg salad sandwiches. A few years ago, the recipe was published in our newspaper and I've been making it this way ever since. The celery seed gives it a wonderful flavor.
Served on a crusty slice of French bread with spinach...
...or, on the spinach leaves alone - it makes lunch-time, happy-time and that's no yoke!
Happy Easter!
Beans and Barley Egg Salad
Makes 6 Sandwiches
12 eggs
½ cup good quality mayonnaise (I use Hellmans Light)
½ teaspoon celery seed
½ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon pepper
Cover eggs with water and bring to a boil. Immediately turn off the heat and let pan sit, covered, for 20 minutes.
Pour off hot water and place eggs into an ice bath for 5-10 minutes (this really helps the egg shells come off easily!). Peel eggs and place them in a large bowl. Chop eggs with a pastry cutter and add remaining ingredients. Taste and adjust seasonings. I like lots of celery seed and pepper!
Serve on your favorite bread and enjoy!
