Easter Eggs to Easter Brunch

Easter was always a special event when my kids were little. First of all we would spend all day dying the hardboiled eggs and decorating them. I well remember that chrome kitchen table covered with newspapers and kids sitting on their knees in the chair carefully drawing on their eggs and then choosing the colours they wanted their egg to be. I would make up pint mason jars with all different colours by putting about a cup of lukewarm water in each, 2 tablespoons of vinegar, and about a teaspoon of food colouring. Of course you could make the colours lighter or darker if you wanted by regulating the amount of food colouring you put in each jar. We only had red, green, blue and yellow food colouring, so if you wanted other colours you had to mix them together. Red and yellow makes orange, blue and red makes purple, blue and green makes turquoise.

The longer you left your eggs in the colouring, the darker they would get, so there was always the artist’s touch needed to get the eggs to exactly the right hue before spooning it out of the jar and drying it on a clean rag.

Then they would go into the fridge to be hidden by Mac in our yard on Easter morning.

Finding the eggs was the highlight of Easter morning. Mac was a pretty good hider and the kids knew exactly how many eggs needed to be found. The race was on to see who could find the most! Mac traded each basket of found eggs for a chocolate rabbit and then the eggs came back to me to make a big potato salad because we always had a special Easter brunch with the cousins and aunts and uncles who would gather at our house. A typical Easter brunch menu consisted of cold sliced up baked ham, potato salad, sliced up tomatoes, cucumbers and cheese, fresh homemade buns, pickles and olives and for desert, rainbow-coloured layers of jello in parfait glasses with whipped cream on top.

Easter Egg Potato Salad

5 lbs of peeled and cubed potatoes cooked with salt

   until just done but not mushy

1 dozen hard-cooked eggs (more is fine too)

 chopped up or sliced as you prefer

1 cup of finely chopped celery

1/2  cup of finely chopped onion

2 batches of radishes, chopped up fine

Dressing

1 1/2 cups of mayonaise

1/8 cup of mustard

Salt, pepper and garlic powder to taste

Mix the dressing ingredients together. Can add more mayo if you prefer or less mustard.

Mix the salad ingredients together then mix in dressing until it is creamy.

You can premake the salad minus the eggs the night before if you wish to let the flavours meld, and add the eggs just before you serve.