Tea ......................................... by Sarah Kluge

T e a D y e d E g g s

by Bonnie Ramsburg

** * Scrolling, Scrolling,

Scrolling… * * * ‘Wait a minute! What was that? WOW, those look cool! Chinese Tea Eggs, hardboiled eggs that are marbled. I really want to try to make those for the tea issue of the magazine,’ I thought to myself as a post on Facebook caught my attention.

The way they make it look in the magazines

Fast-forward a couple of months, it’s now time to look at that link and see how to make those eggs!

‘Uh oh, I don’t think I’ll be trying those! That isn’t ANYTHING like I thought it was going to be! I better ask the editress about this,’ I think to myself. Inner dialog is so fun, isn’t it? Needless to say, this isn’t about Chinese Tea Eggs —it wasn’t something I wanted to attempt making, but after my experience, they may have been easier!

First, gather up the supplies: • Eggs, however many different teas you wish to try • Jars to put them in that will allow the eggs to be covered on all sides • and (so I don’t forget to put it in elsewhere) white vinegar • and Alum powder—it’s white and used for pickling Ready? Set? GO! Onto the big event!

Attempt One:

How hard can this be? Boil some eggs, brew a few different flavors of tea, put eggs in tea and let them sit for about 5-15 minutes; right? That’s just what I did, on my first attempt. I took the eggs out after five minutes, just to see if they were actually getting colored. I found to my surprise, that only two eggs had noticeably changed colors. And interestingly enough, the green tea was one of them. I knew the black tea would do the trick; I had used it for a project several years ago. I checked the eggs again after ten minutes were

up, and decided that maybe, just maybe, I’d better BING search how to do this supposedly easy experiment.

After going through many links trying to find the information that I needed, or thought I needed, (and finding a link that told me to do it exactly as I had…yeah, like THAT had worked) I finally found a link that mentioned (drum roll please!) White Vinegar. Yes, the ever-needed ingredient that makes the dye stick. Back to the coloring jars!

Attempt Two:

Okay, so I repeated the boiling and brewing, but this time I added the vinegar to the tea before it cooled down. But guess what? I hadn’t entirely given up my hopes of making marbled eggs yet. If you look closely, you might be able to see the cracks in the eggshells where I had gently tapped them with a spoon to give the tea an open area to seep through and dye the eggs themselves. Unfortunately, the tea didn’t take the hint, so no marble affect. Although we now have a somewhat more pronounced color! But they look so dirty!

Back to BING, hopefully for more information, and yessss… there is what I think I need to know. Add Alum powder to the tea to make the color deeper and darker. And you should be using herbal teas, hmmm, I thought I had been, but I’ll buy some more, just to be on the safe side. Back to the coloring jars!