Pre-Colored Easter Eggs

There they were, way too early and way too bright; hard boiled eggs in lurid colors, ready to take home. Their existence just strikes me as wrong.  Dyeing eggs is a seasonal activity to be shared with siblings, under the auspices of Grandma or Aunt Lou. They would save the tin cans, line them up and pour in the boiling water. Next came the carefully measured vinegar. Surely I am not the only baby boomer for whom a whiff of vinegar always conjures up a fleeting vision of Easter eggs. The recalcitrant little tablets of Paas egg dye always took an unbearably long time to dissolve, in spite of my prodding with the wire egg-dipper. Then came the magic of carefully submerging the eggs and checking their progress. Half of them were destined to disappear in the yard or be forgotten in the refrigerator. Easter eggs are really about the process of making them, not the final product. The ritual of dyeing them is what really counts.