All the Colors of Unreal

  

I am a worry-er with a guilty conscience. This applies to all aspects of my life and covers all actions I take. But I'm not writing tonight about all my life, just this past Easter weekend and more specifically, about coloring things.

Guilt and Worry cause me to generally be quite careful about the quality of food my kids eat. I try to limit the amount of processed things they consume and read labels before I buy packaged foods. (Sometimes I even put the package back on the shelf after I read their labels.)  But, I am not perfect. (If I was, there would, of course, be no need to worry or feel guilt!)

This past weekend I went a little color crazy and bought both regular and neon boxes of food coloring. Now, I earnestly try to limit foods containing fake coloring. I really hesitated before buying the two boxes of dyes. But I was no match against the endless shade possibilities afforded by eight different mini bottles of fake food color. (On the package they give you the drop ratios to make such alluring hues as apricot, deep purple, orange sunset, teal, dusty rose, stormy blue and green apple. Who could resist?!)

When it came time to dye eggs, I realized that I am not a seasoned egg dye-er. I only hard boiled eight eggs to start. I am not sure how I came to the conclusion that eight eggs was the right number to dye. The girls and I went a little Mad Scientist with the different color possibilities, wanting to create them all. Very quickly we had way more dye colors than eggs to dye. In the middle of dying those eight eggs, I realized I better boil some more. That's when I cooked another six. (Why am I so stingy with my eggs?)

The next day it was time to make cupcakes for my husband's family's Easter picnic. This is where I failed as a Really Good Provider by making cupcakes from the box (and not the trans-fat-free mix from the natural food section. Target had the classics on major sale and that won out over good nutrition.) And then, we topped those processed delights with some nearly neon food-colored frosting in "Princess" shades, as my daughter described them. (Ironically though, I made the frosting itself from scratch. I realized that this wasn't the best idea as I watched the cupcakes oxidize in the sun, turning yet more shades of unreal.)

What do I take away from this weekend? Use less dye. When it comes to food you're coloring yourself, less is probably more.