I Do Not Like Green Eggs And Ham-Dr. Seuss Week

My daughters are having Dr. Seuss week at school this week. Today was Green Eggs and Ham Day. They get to dress up each day, today they went all dressed in green. Oh I love these kinds of weeks! So, for dinner I made them hardboiled eggs that I dyed green. You could do this 2 ways. The first would be to add the food coloring to the water that you are going to dye the eggs in. I would also add vinegar to the water. Then, you would want to crack the eggs all over. Everywhere they are cracked will let the colored water in and color the egg on the inside. Of course you could also just dye the outside of the egg just like you would an Easter Egg. But I wanted the insides of my eggs to be green. So, I boiled them and then took the shells off of them. Then, I put them all into a cup with water and green food coloring. They just sat in there for about 10 minutes and voila! Green Eggs! Just like some of my other colored food, this may totally gross some people out. For my children it was perfect! They were surprised that the eggs tasted normal. Somehow they were expecting green eggs to have a different flavor I guess.
Next up, we also had Green Eggs for dessert. I made Green Jello Eggs. There is a much easier recipe if you have those plastic egg molds made by Jell-O! I, however, no longer have mine. I have no clue why I would not have them, as I make them every year at Easter. I move a lot. Each time I move I purge. I purge.A.Lot! That's all I can say. ;) So, I will tell you a secret of how to do them the old fashioned way. Actually, this is how my Mom would make them. All growing up we would have fantastic Jell-O desserts for Easter. My Mom makes this totally awesome layered Jell-O. We'll share that with you another time. This is about the Jell-O Eggs. My Mom would have a bed of green Jell-O with layered, colored Jell-O eggs on top. So cute, right!? She's so creative. Thanks to her, I knew how to make my Green Eggs, even without my beloved plastic egg molds! You will need Green Jell-O. Of course as I was making this today, I was thinking it might have been fun to do a blue and yellow together. But I decided against that as my kids didn't need a double batch of Jell-O!! You hollow out some regular eggs by blowing them out. Ok, this morning I've had comments that some people don't know how to blow eggs out. I actually saw Martha Stewart do it once and she had a tool to do this for you. I figure most of you wont have this tool. You will make holes on each end of the egg. Use a pin to do this (although, again there is a tool that can make these holes for you, but I'm guessing most people don't have that tool either...my Mom does! She has all the cool kitchen gadgets!). You are going to blow the insides of the egg out of the egg. To make the insides come out easier, stick your pin in and scramble it up a bit. This ruptures the yolk. Then turn the egg so the larger hole is down. Either blow into a bowl (so that you can use the egg) or blow into your sink to just send it down the drain! And you blow into the smaller hole which forces the insides out the larger hole. Make your hole on one side (I prefer this to be the pointier side) pretty big, I'd say about 1/2 an inch. Make sure to clean them out really well. Then, you tape up the smaller hole's side. Go overboard on the tape here. These eggs leak really easily and it is no fun cleaning spilled, set Jell-o out of your fridge!! Then, mix up your Jell-O as if you were making Jell-O Jigglers. Set your eggs back up in your egg carton as this is the best holder for them and you really don't want them spilling!
I've poured the Jell-O directly into the eggs before and it works alright. However, I do tend to shake and so I opted for a funnel. This worked like a charm except that it's hard to tell when they are full. I just went until they overflowed a bit. Then, put them in the fridge and let them set. Once they are set you just take the shells off of them, just like you would do with a normal hard-boiled egg. However, with these eggs don't use the forehead method of cracking the eggs. What?! You don't know the forehead method?! I don't know why but...I'm thinking this was my Dad's thing. Ya, I'll let my Dad take blame for this. When cracking your hard-boiled egg instead of hitting the egg on the counter or other hard surface...we use our forehead. Sometimes we use someone else's forehead (if we're annoyed with them or trying to annoy them, I guess). It's pretty cool in my house because I don't remember teaching this to my children, yet this is how they crack their eggs. The little ones will sometimes ask to crack theirs on my forehead instead of on their own forehead, and I happily oblige. The trick to this not hurting is to actually do it pretty hard. If you don't do it hard enough, you wont crack it and it just kind of feels like you just hit yourself on the forehead with something (I know. This is brain science here!). Oh, and do it on the side of the egg. The 2 end points will just hurt.
Once peeled they should look like this. Sometimes they look a lot better. However, I was a bit preoccupied at the stage of adding water and added too much. When this happens the eggs will still hold their shape, but they will just not have as smooth of a finish on them. When my Mom makes her layered jell-o eggs she would just fill each egg partially with one color, let them set, then add another layer. She usually made these with about 3 layers, if I'm remembering correctly (and to be honest, my memories of our families childhood seem to be wrong the most. I chalk that up to being the youngest. I'm happy with things the way I remember them though so I'm not too worried about it all. I discussed the butter thing with Anjeanette and she doesn't remember actually liking to lick the butter wrapper. She also doesn't remember doing it often. That is so not the way I remember it. Hmmmm. Oh well.). The real point here is green eggs for Dr. Seuss week. These 2 "recipes" are quick and easy, and my favorite-cheap! I had everything on hand (yes not all of us have every color of Jell-O on hand, but I do) too! I hope you all have fun with Dr. Seuss week as well. We finished the evening off by reading Dr. Seuss books tonight. But since the kids are reading them at school, I'm wondering if that is overload....Nah, you can't ever go wrong with Dr. Seuss, right!?

Rebecca