Dye!

I began the egg dyeing process with such optimism.  I decided I was going to do it the hard way--the natural way--and use onion skins instead of food coloring.

My mom found awesome instructions from the kitchn  for  dyeing eggs with onion skins.  Traditionally, Russian people save all their onion skins all Lent long for this express purpose.  I, however, had neither the forsight, nor the appetite for onions to do that.  Also, I am not Russian.  So I devised a plot.  When my mother and I went to Wegmans, I hung around the onions, as an unsuspecting employee of that fine, overpriced establishment culled the loose skins from the shelf.  I sidled up and began begging him to take pity on my skinless state and bestow upon me all the unwanted onion skins he was about to throw out.  He consulted with his manager, which seemed a bit unnecessary to me, and finally granted me a huge bag of the coveted red and yellow skins.

I slaved over the vat of dye, carefully following the directions.  And when they came out, my eggs were not rich shades of mahogany and russet.  They were poopy, boring brown.

Enter the barefoot kitchen witch's instructions for colorful cracked eggs, or Chinese Tea Eggs, which are sold in China the way we sell hotdogs and pretzels on the street here.  In a nutshell, you crack your hardboiled eggs a bunch, then let them sit in a glassful of food coloring and water in the fridge overnight.  In the morning, you peel them and--behold!  They are covered in gorgeous color fissures.

 I also kept some of them whole and marinated them in various shades of food dye overnight.

Crisis averted.  The end.