Teen Cooking Program - Easter

This is a major throwback to a program I did over a year ago.  It was in April of 2014, in fact.  I think this was before I decided to do a Chopped program with them.  In fact, this may have been what kicked off that idea.  I'm not sure.  Anyways, with Easter coming up, and me not necessarily wanting to do an egg-dying program, we came up with something else.  

The teens were going to make their own deviled eggs.  Rather than me tell them how to make them though, I just set out a bunch of ingredients and let them come up with their own recipes.  It was an adventure to say the least.

I cooked the eggs at home, and made about 4 dozen or so. Then I gave them mayo, mustard, relish, wasabi, soy sauce, sriracha, bacon bits, scallions, chives... there may have been more, but I really can't remember right now. Then I just let them go to town. There were only 4 of them, and in the end, I wanted everyone to try everyone else's.

While they were busy making theirs, I had my own recipes, one of which is a delicious wasabi and sriracha egg, found here.When it came time to taste them, they were not too thrilled with my eggs. In fact, I'm pretty sure some refused to try them.  Their parents liked it.  I guess pearls, swine, blah, blah, blah. I *think* the other was just the standard - mayo, mustard, relish.

You can see that some had a little trouble with ratio of ingredients and had a different way of cutting their eggs.  Others certainly kept plating in mind while working on their recipes.  They all had fun, and we ate a TON of deviled eggs that day.

This is a great way to do a cooking program without *really* doing a cooking program.  It lets them be creative too, without going too far out of the box.  I suppose I could have given them things like anchovies and olives and things like that, but I do have budget constraints, and at the end of the day, I did want them to actually eat whatever they came up with. There will be more teen posts, I'm just having trouble finding pictures, and this is the first one I ran across.

Dyed Easter Eggs

So I didn't last the entire month doing teen tech stuff. Honestly, I kinda forgot there were more than 4 Tuesdays this month, and so I didn't plan as far enough ahead as I should have. However, with Easter coming up this Sunday, it wasn't hard to figure out what to do with them. Everyone loved dyeing eggs, don't they? One of my coworkers directed me to Martha Stewart's website where she has tons of different ways to decorate eggs.


The first way, (and not found on Martha's site) is of the hippie tie-dyed variety. You can find those tie-dye egg kits at the supermarket, but I wasn't really satisfied with the way they do it. The kit that I bought had you putting the dye on, but then rubbing it around to make it look tie-dyed. Lame. So I searched online and found some hints. If you dip a paper towel in a water and vinegar solution, wrap it around the egg, and then drop the color onto the towel, the colors bleed and have a much more realistic effect. When done with your design, take the paper towel off and let the egg dry.

The second technique is marbleizing. Basically, you dye the egg in a light color and let dry. Then, make another darker colored dye in a shallow pan and swirl a bit of oil in it. Take the egg and roll it once through the oil and dye and then pat dry! Easy as pie!

The third (and coolest) technique we used was silk tie-dyeing. You can go to Martha Stewart to get the tutorial. The basics are this: Blow out the eggs (Idk why she doesn't say this, but why put all this work into something so beautiful just to have it destroyed?). Take the egg and wrap it in the silk. Wrap that in a bit of white cloth and secure with string or a rubber band. Pop into boiling water for 20 minutes. Take out, unwrap, and presto! Beautiful eggs. The blue one on the right was made with a singe piece of silk - the white parts are where the fabric creased and it didn't touch. The bottom two on the right were made using several ties (the skinny end) and wrapping it around the egg.

How did the teens like this? Disappointingly, I only had one come today. However, with Spring Break looming this weekend, it's to be expected. My girl really liked dyeing the eggs, though she wasn't too interested in the marbleizing or the silk ties. However, after she saw the results of mine, she wanted to do one. Luckily we had just enough time that she could, but seriously? I kinda wanted to strangle her. All in all it's been good so far - and hey, after blowing out a dozen eggs for my teens to use, I've now got enough quiche to last a week.