It’s Easter, that spring holiday that features bunnies, chocolate and eggs. Why rabbits bring us chicken eggs has always been a mystery to me, but we’ve all come to accept this peculiar aspect of our secular celebration of Easter. Kids spend hours coloring hard-boiled eggs with dye, wax crayons, and a healthy helping of white vinegar, and then when they’re not looking their eggs disappear and they have to hunt for them. Once their Easter baskets are overflowing with colored eggs, parents ask the age-old question, “What do we do with them now?”
If you like cold hard-boiled eggs with a sheen of lavender dye on them, enjoy the prospect of a vast array of pastel egg salad sandwiches in your future. Or you could go full-on creative. Here are some ideas of what to do with leftover Easter eggs if you don’t want to eat them:
• Plant them in your garden and see what happens next. You can manifest the answer to the age-old question, “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” If the answer is the egg, then you would expect a chicken to grow from it, right? Just give your egg ample water and sunlight, and wait for the clucking to start.
• Pretend that you’re the POTUS and host an Easter egg roll on your lawn. Set up an array of chocolate bunnies, with or without their ears, and use the eggs to bowl with. One point for each bunny that gets bowled over, and extra points for each crack in the egg’s shell. The person with the most points at the end has to take all the eggs home to dispose of them. In your fantasy role as POTUS, feel free to enact any executive orders you desire, as long as they further the health and well-being of our nation’s Easter eggs.
• Hang the eggs on your trees and bushes. They will make colorful yard decorations, until your HOA swoops in to tell you that yard decorations are expressly forbidden in your homeowners’ contract. You’ll then spend the next few years in litigation in what will become the landmark case, HOA (Humorless Officious Advisors) v. EGGS (Eggs Give Genuine Satisfaction). I hope you win.
• Employ the Scientific Method. Use those leftover eggs for a science project. You know, the kind where you leave something in the bowels of your fridge until mold takes over. Track the progress of the eggs as they morph from savory to green and stinky. Do you suppose that’s what inspired Dr. Seuss to write “Green Eggs and Ham?”
• String them all together and tie them on the back of your friend’s car with a “Just Married” sign. Or, if none of your friends are getting married any time soon, use that streamer of Easter eggs for whatever celebration you wish. Nothing says “Congratulations” like a bulky string of hand-dyed eggs trailing behind the car. Your friends will thank you. Really.
• Bring them out at Little League practice. Instead of a fastball, make it a hard-boiled pitch. The kids will have a blast. It’s a ground rule double if the egg explodes on impact and the debris scatters out of the infield. Score it an inside-the-park home run if the egg stays intact with no cracks, regardless of where it lands.
• Use your leftover eggs as stress balls. Throw them on the ground and stomp on them to get out all your pent-up frustrations. Heave them against the wall. Smash them to smithereens. You can count your cleanup efforts with broom and dustpan as an exercise workout. You’re bound to sleep better at the end of the day after all that positive stress release.
• Become an egg bookie. Take bets when you clap two eggs together to see which one will crack first. Wager on the fastest egg to roll down the street and end up in the ditch. Start a pool to guess the day on which the last Easter egg gets consumed or finally thrown away. The possibilities are endless.
When all else fails, have some hard-boiled eggs for breakfast on the day after. Happy Easter, everyone!
• Peggy McKee Barnhill is a wife, mother, and author who writes cozy mysteries under the pen name “Greta McKennan.” She likes to look at the bright side of life.
