A group of fellow First-Bookers and I decided to try our hand at the culinary arts. Not just any culinary arts, mind you — children’s-book-inspired culinary arts. The tale you are about to read, a tale in photos, is one of a few, brave, pioneering souls and their quest for green eggs and ham…

First, let me lay out a few basics for you. We entered this experiment in cooking with a simple assumption: food + green food coloring = green food. We decided to partake in this meal as a leisurely Sunday brunch: eggs (of course) and ham or in this case bacon. Not quite by the book, but we weren’t about to go about trying to color a full 10 pound ham (we may be into eating green food and all, but we’re not crazy.)

The book shows eggs sunny side up, but we thought we’d start with something a little more basic. So, scrambled eggs was first on our list. 2 eggs, a few drops of green food coloring, and a bowl of beaten eggs later, we were in business:

Success! This emboldened us and we moved on to more technical endeavors. “Why not go all out?” we asked ourselves. Sunny side up it was! We first separated the whites from the yolks. We figured we’d color the whites, much the same as the scrambed eggs, and then add the yolks back to it in the pan. This seemed like a great idea at the time…



This sunny side up, though it does not look tasty, does look somewhat edible, but do not let your eyes deceive you! My co-chef’s skeptical face speaks volumes — this egg is not for consumption. The whites (greens?) are brittle and the yolk barely heated.

Perhaps one of our more skilled readers can provide us a few cooking tips on how a green sunny side up might better be prepared.

Down, but not out, we moved on to our final egg dish: hard boiled. This proved a simpler feat.

First we tried boiling our eggs in green water. This, of course, seemed rather silly, but we were caught up in the moment. Noticing that our eggs had hardly turned a shade of off-white, we took a more direct path. We filled a dish with a touch of vinegar and green food coloring and went at the eggs. This did an excellent job of really soaking in that natural green egg color.

We cracked open the eggs to have a look-see and, lo and behold, some of the green had soaked through! Victory was ours. I wouldn’t exactly call the end result visually mouth watering, but it did provide an interesting effect.



So, with yet another success behind us, we moved onto the fourth and final stage of our kitchen endeavors. It was time for some bacon! First, a rather disgusting attempt at soaking the bacon in green water proved wholly futile, (bacon is largely fat and fat is hydrophobic.) We quickly learned that direct application of green food coloring to our bacon worked perfectly. Small cracks and creases in the bacon took up the dye quite nicely. Flip it around a few times and be sure to spread the food coloring around as best you can — it will spread given enough help. (I apologize for the fuzzy photos.)


Delicious! We carried our fare outside for a quick presentation before attempting to eat our green cuisine. We even capped off our brunch with a nice big glass of — you guessed it — green milk. I will let the pictures speak for themselves.



Obviously our cooking needs a bit of practice, but it does seem that our basic recipe works! If you have any suggestions on how you might make your own green eggs and ham, give a shout out in the comments!