Natural Food Coloring?

[BeagleMommy]

What natural food coloring do you all use?

I know, traditionally, people probably didn't color many foods except special desserts. In the Laura Ingalls Wilder books, Ma colored the butter in winter since it was so pale. She colored that with grated carrot which interestingly added some of the beta carotene missing from butter in winter.

The specific problem I have is that my toddler will not eat eggs unless they are green a la green eggs and ham. I wouldn't worry about her not eating eggs, but she is terribly picky (daddy is, too) and eggs are good and cheap. And she will eat them if I add a drop or two of blue food coloring.

Where should I look?

[stephienoodle]

I don't know of any blue food coloring that is natural, but some health food stores carry green food coloring made from spinach. If you can't find any locally, you might be able to juice some spinach and mix it in with the eggs to make them green.

[my_baby_love]

I have chopped some spinach really finely before and added them to eggs to get my toddler to eat them (also a-la green eggs and ham ). Plus, he usually will not eat greens so I figured it was a good way to get him to eat that food group too.

[tanyalynn]

Check out the India Tree brand Nature's Colors line (not all the lines, just this one). The colors are Feingold-compliant, they sell a 3-pack of gel-type food colors.

http://www.indiatree.com/products/de...ors/index.html

[Magelet]

the india's ink are pretty good. they're only pastels, but they work nice. We had some with some weird name (deer tree or moose foot or something) that were far better, and I loved them, no clue what they were though. they came in little glass jars and were vegetable based.

(fwiw, I would juice spinach as well. I was going to use beet juice last time (for frosting) and ended up using turmeric, which worked, though it was a little flavorful.)

[katiesk]

if you cook purple cabbage for dye, it makes a bright dye that turns the shell of white eggs blue, so it may also help yellow scrambled eggs turn green...it might be an experiment, though!

[kallyn]

Stick the eggs in a blender with a handful of spinach and they'll cook up bright green. http://cavemanfood.blogspot.com/2008...i-am-eggs.html

[BeagleMommy]

Thanks so much! Spinach is the perfect solution for this picky kid!

I'll try the other natural food colorings for other stuff. I can't live without EVER having buttercream icing, after all. The point is to eat well *most* of the time, right?