More Food as Art

Again, I’m going to take a little side trip away from processed food and celebrate the season and my slice of Slavic heritage with a few more-traditional “food as art” examples.

In a number of Eastern European countries, around Easter, hard-boiled eggs were traditionally colored with natural plant dyes: onion skins for an orangy brown color and beets for a dark red, for example. Intricate designs were scratched into them after dyeing or were painted on with melted wax before soaking in dye. I’ve tried it, but my pathetic attempts didn’t quite match up to these example of Lithuanian Easter eggs, Polish Easter eggs, Croatian Easter eggs, Ukrainian Easter eggs (Pysanky), and still more and more Pysanky. Plus, here’s an interesting artistic variation from Slovenia.

Wesołych świąt! Next week, back to more-prosaic topics...

   —Lynn A. Kuntz