Mysterious Eggs

With a backyard full of laying hens and portly rabbits, we embraced this weekend's egg and bunny traditions.... admittedly with less organization than our Valentine's Love Bugs. Luckily, we learned a few things along the way.

1. Brown eggs can be successfully dyed. Though our well-fed birds are now producing giant eggs... apparently. None of them fit in the egg dipper and only 2 slipped into the shrinking plastic decorating thingys that came in the kit.


2. Kids 4 and under can search for 8 eggs and find 50, no questions asked. My own ongoing birthday celebrations distracted me from effective Bunny Prep (oooh the mommy guilt). Somehow, we could only find about 8 of the plastic eggs my mom had left for the girls... So I overfilled all 8 with Starburst jelly beans and hid them around the toys in the backyard.


I assuaged my guilt with the knowledge that jelly beans are always exciting and no one remembers details from toddlerhood... right?

Elle looked for the eggs in the most logical place... the nesting boxes!

Well, the mini-egg hunt lasted ten times longer than expected. Maya asked us to hold her basket (and therefore her eggs), so each time she trotted back with a new find, we stashed it to be found again later. Also, the grass in her basket was hiding a pile of plastic eggs, so I covertly filled and hid a few more mid-hunt.

She was still overjoyed by her pile of candy, so much so that she graciously shared some with us.

3. Fresh eggs sink. Perhaps everyone knew this already. Everyone but me. I know that fresh eggs are fine room temperature for up to a month, and in the fridge for three months, "or longer." Finally, though, I looked up how to safely judge whether an egg is okay (our eggs seem to be gaining on us).

As you all probably already know, if an egg lies flat on the bottom of a bowl full of water, it is very fresh. The more buoyant, the less fresh it is because the little air pocket expands as the proteins in the egg break down. If it floats... toss it.