finland.suomi: Coloring the Whites

With Easter just around the corner, it was time to once again share holiday traditions. The Easter culture exchange started with my sampling some Finnish Easter pudding—mämmi. With a flavor and texture resembling soggy rye bread, this dark brown 'pudding' is typically eaten with cream and sprinkled with sugar. (You can read more about it here: mämmi.) While the treat is not inedible, I can't say I enjoyed it much either.

Mämmi—Finnish Easter pudding

To return the cultural favor, I invited a few Finns to partake in traditional American egg dyeing. While Finnish children typically use watercolor paints to color eggs around Easter, my friends had never used the small vats of dye I am accustomed to. Therefore, the egg dyeing adventure began Thursday morning with an all-American PAAS coloring kit (my dad brought to me in Italy). For a few hours, my friend, Henna, and I used the colors of the rainbow to liven up the white shells of our hard-boiled eggs. My flatmate, Maria, and I continued with the fun the following day, dyeing another dozen eggs. The smiles and laughs shared during this cultural exchange compensates for the fact that a few too many hard boiled eggs now sit in our frig.

Henna colored one egg with the
classic cracked-egg-with-eyes design.

I met Henna in my Chinese course, so we continued
to practice the language while dyeing eggs.

As a forestry major, Maria was keen on making a
~~pine~~ ~~fir~~ spruce tree egg. (Let's just say I got a short
tree lesson during the creation of this egg...)