And Enchanted and "Eggstra" Special Easter Story

Hey there, it's Nancy May.

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Welcome back to another Family Tree Food and Stories.

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Sylvia's out gathering up ingredients for future shows, but this one's mine.

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Today's episode is a little different, and I'm taking you back to a springtime many years

ago, a time when I was a little girl.

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I tried to save the world, well, we'll say it, one egg at a time, with a bit of magic, and

how an Easter egg tried to heal a heart.

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Let me take you there.

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It was Easter season.

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and I must have been around five years old or so.

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My younger sister, Tracy, who must have been around three years old, had been in the

hospital battling childhood leukemia.

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At the time, none of us knew what that future held for her or our family, but it was

springtime and we were all feeling great and full of energy and hoping that the days ahead

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would be much better.

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But kids have a way of sensing things, and I knew this was a scary time for Tracy, my

sister, and my parents too.

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As a child at the time, I didn't have a word for grief or fear.

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Most kids don't.

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And I held most of those feelings to myself, but I put my creative spirit and imagination

to work for her, myself, and my folks too.

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In doing so, something inside of me said, to write a story to Tracy.

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I recently found a typed up version of that story, which had been saved and preserved all

these years by my mom.

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Seeing and reading this story again, I realized how much the Easter season and those

simple colored eggs that we often take for granted can work to help us care for those we

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love at any age.

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So today I'm sharing with you this five-year-old version of me.

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It's called an Easter story.

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One time there was a little Easter bunny.

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He was an Easter bunny helper.

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He wanted to help his Easter bunny master.

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And then he got a job.

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It was to hide the eggs.

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He went on.

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hopping around to hide those eggs.

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But his master told him not to have anybody find him or see him.

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But then while hiding some eggs, somebody saw him, just like his master told him not to

do.

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Then he went to some more houses and it was 15 houses.

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Then he went hippity hoppity, hippity hop.

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And then he said, I guess I'll go to Tracy May's house.

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I'll give her an extra enchanted egg because she's been so good since she's been in the

hospital.

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And I guess I'll give her a lot too.

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So long, I'll be seeing you, signed Nancy May.

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Now remember, this is five year old Nancy.

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And no, I was not a literary genius at that age, and maybe not today.

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But to be honest with you, reading that story kind of took my breath away.

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I must have been trying to find a way to bring magic to my sister's bedside, just a little

bit.

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And it brought a little bit more magic back to my life today.

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You see food, family and stories.

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aren't always about the meals that we share at the table.

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Sometimes they're about how we try, even as a child, to help heal the people that we love

and to wrap something beautiful around them.

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And sometimes creating a little enchanted story can help everyone.

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So this story brought me back to many springtime memories and traditions back in our life.

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And to help make these days easier on our family, my Aunt Pat, my mom's sister, always

found a way to distract my other sister, Cindy.

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and me, while mom and dad focused on Tracy.

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This included making picture sugar eggs that were truly works of art, even in the hands of

a five-year-old.

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So what are these eggs?

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Well, you don't see them around too much anymore, but they're big sugar eggs and about the

size of an extra large duck egg.

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But inside, inside, there was magic lived.

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You'd peer through a little hole cut out almost like a window on the shell.

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and there would be a tiny world of miniature bunnies, little flowers, maybe a chick or

two.

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And it sort of was a sugar diorama inside this egg.

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My aunt learned how to make these eggs.

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But once we made them and they were done and dried and all hard and crusty on our kitchen

counters, they sat there like prizes and displayed like treasures in our dining room

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window on the ledge for weeks and sometimes months until the summer humidity started to

melt them down.

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I know, right?

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If you're interested in making them yourself, I'll put a little recipe in the notes below.

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But while my Aunt Pat was crafting her sugar eggs and showing us how to create these

masterpieces in our kitchen, my sister and I were also off making our own version of

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magical Easter egg art with what felt like 100 hard-boiled eggs that mom had carefully

cooked and stored in the refrigerator for us.

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But I remember sitting around the kitchen table with vinegar cups, those little wire

dippers that never really worked that well.

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The egg would always fall out, splash, and color would go everywhere.

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And we'd inevitably end up using a spoon and getting the dye all over our hands and

fingers.

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You could always tell who was dyeing eggs at school on the next Monday morning based on

the color in our hands.

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You know, the color that gets all around your cuticles and you can never get out?

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Well, sometimes we actually compare note of what dyeing kit we used and which ones were

better than the others.

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Eggs, eggs, and more eggs.

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I have to tell you, those chickens really work overtime at Easter.

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But there's extra goodies, extra get it, to share in this episode.

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We'll take a break and I'll be right back with what to do with extra eggs and a few

interesting, rather colorful recycling tips.

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Don't hop off.

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I'll be right back.

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So what do you do with all these extra eggs after Easter?

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Honestly, you can only eat so many egg salad sandwiches before the whole house starts to

smell, well, kind of like vinegar with an attitude.

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You know what?

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Vinegar has an attitude anyway.

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But over the years, we tried doing everything with those leftover eggs, even giving the

dog one or two.

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I know, dogs are great for that, right?

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So now you've eaten the eggs or you're about to eat the eggs and you have all that colored

shells sitting on the counter and it seems like such a shame to toss them away.

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Well, here's a fun thing that you can do with your family.

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Take those cracked egg shells, dry them off and use them like mosaic tiles.

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You know what?

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You can actually make some beautiful pictures with mosaic egg shells.

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All right, maybe they're not works of Italian mosaics that you might keep around for

generations to come.

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but they're a lot of fun and you never know what's gonna come out of your imagination or

your kids.

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So here's how you do this.

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On a piece of paper, draw out your design and what you wanna create and put a little glue

in the spaces that you wanna fill out to start with.

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Then take the colored pieces of shell that you wanna use and put those in that section.

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I guess it's kind of like a paint by numbers with colored Easter egg shells.

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Think of it that way.

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Maybe you can create a work of art that will last for generations to come.

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If nothing else, it will be an

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egg stravaganza of an event that you'll do together.

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All right, another pun.

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Excuse me, but I just can't help myself.

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Another idea is to use the shells for planting.

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So you can't really use the shells as a cup for planting like you might have done as a kid

yourself, but you can take those shells, crack them all up and put them in the soil.

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They're great nutrients for your soil, for your plants, and for all those springtime

hyacins that are popping up right now.

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I love the smell of a hyacinth, don't you?

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And those egg cartons?

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They're great for starting seedlings.

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Think tomato plants.

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Zucchini.

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What do you do with leftover zucchini?

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Well, get ready for the great zucchini takeover.

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Seriously.

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But that will be a show for later on in the season.

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Okay, we'll stop here before I start hatching some new ideas for you.

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But enough with the puns.

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I can't help myself, honestly.

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Food memories don't just live in flavor.

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Sometimes I live in the fun and the sticky glue and fingers.

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splashes of color, giggles, a laugh, and maybe a heartfelt story or two that can be

written down and saved for years and then discovered by a not-so-five-year-old adult.

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Sadly, Tracy passed away, but in finding that story, my heart sort of protected itself

without realizing it at the time.

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You see, I have no physical memory of my sister Tracy.

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I guess it's a way to sort of put a blanket around the heart.

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To this day, I don't totally understand why.

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but that little found story typed up and saved by my mom, carefully saved, and I think she

knew deep down inside that it would matter to me again one day, long after she'd been

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gone.

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I've placed a photo of that original typed story in the show notes if you'd like to see

it.

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So this spring, I hope that you find your own enchanted eggs.

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They may or may not be made of sugar or tucked inside a bunny tail, but they're there in

the recipes that make you feel loved.

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the stories that rise up when you least expect them, and the memories that you choose to

pass on to others.

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Because food and family stories, they just don't fill our bellies, they fill our hearts.

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Until then.

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So long, I'll see you soon, signed Nancy Mae.

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Every meal has a story, and every story is a feast.

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We invite you to share this story and others with your friends and family.