Purple Easter Eggs

If your wanting a natural purple for your easter eggs I suggest using beets or cabbage.

HOWEVER, there is a catch to getting the purple color and getting it to stay purple and not turn grey.

Beets or Purple Cabbage chopped fine
Place in a stainless steel sauce pan
Cover twice as deep with Vinegar and add one cup of sugar to the mix.
Bring to a boil.
Strain the vegetation out of the liquer.
Return the dye juice to the sauce pan.
Bring back to a boil and then remove heat source.
Place your eggs in the hot liquid and roll around in the liquid.
Do this for about 15 minutes.



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East Garden

Before

During

After

Now I just need to rake the garden and plant oats, a green manure, and then till it up again in about three weeks.  This garden will have cucumbers, two types of picklers, cabbages, brussel sprouts, mustard greens and kale.

Cabbage Update

We planted out cabbages finally, well most of them anyway, after it's done raining tomorrow we will plant the rest of them on the west side of the driveway.

Cabbage Seedlings

Oregano, Cilantrao, Basil (sweet basil)

Roma Tomatoes

Purple Cabbages (above) and Green Cabbages (below)

I'm hoping they will all make it if so I'll have a bountiful garden this year!

This weekends canning short list

First up can the remaining unsalted butter and then start in on the salted butter - in half pints.

I have five heads of green cabbage that need to be canned up as cole slaw and then if I have any time or energy left I'm going to try my hand at canning a batch of carmalized onions.

A picture of the neighbors crabapple tree, the squirrels like this tree better than ours, the neighbors crabapples are sweeter.

Canning Coleslaw

Shred the cabbage using a kraut cutter or mandolin, be sure to keep your fingers out of the way!

Mix carrots and onion in with the shredded cabbage and then sprinkle salt over the mixture and allow to sit for an hour.

Slaw after sitting for one hour with salt.

Slaw in jars ready for the syrup to be added.

Syrup for the slaw is ready, make sure you completely melt the sugar and the syrup is clear.

Syrup added to slaw. The slaw starts to wilt as the heat from the syrup settles in the jars.

Remove bubbles using a canning stick or spatula.

Slaw after 20 minutes of processing in BWB.

Dh decided to experiment with this batch and added the slaw to the jars and then added the syrup - the end result was floating slaw! Next time we'll add the slaw to the syrup and then to the jars!

Pickled Cabbage

The jar on the left has been processed and has turned a dark red violet color, the jar on the right needs processing still.

Purple cabbage jar on the right has the syrup added and has turned a lovely bright red color.

Purple cabbage ready for the syrup.

It was supposed to be Spiced Red Cabbage but I decided at the last minute I didn't want all of the spices in my cabbage. Dh wanted them but I think we'll be much happier about my choice later on, cloves tend to make me sick and the recipe called for a quarter cups worth, and we didn't have any mace which means the only spice we would have used was Allspice so what's the point.

Spiced Purple Cabbage

I'll post the remaining pics tonight as this batch is STILL in progress. I've rinsed the salted shredded cabbage leaves and spun them in the salad spinner they are now resting on paper towel lined plastic food wrap - so my countertop isn't stained purple for all eternity - and needs to drain/dry for six hours. The pickling portion will happen sometime around nine tonight; the purple looks pretty good against my koi yellow walls! We used a kraut cutter to get the cabbage this uniform.

Purple Cabbages

My purple cabbages are coming along nicely. To protect them from slugs etc., I'll put a roof shingle at the base of each plant, apparently slugs don't like crawling across roof shingles!

Some Plants

Baby purple cabbage plants - hey I'm a childless wonder so every plant is officially a baby!

Jerusalem Artichokes coming up everywhere, very yummy to eat btw.

Leeks they winter over here really well.

Garlic that is in desperate need of thinning.