Brooks: Let’s dye potatoes for Easter instead of our precious, precious eggs

This year, the Easter egg hunt starts at the grocery store.

Eggs are a luxury good in Donald Trump’s America. Stores are rationing customers to single cartons or selling individual loosie eggs for frugal shoppers. Nobody wants to take their precious, precious eggs and scatter them around the lawn for the kids to find.

This year, Americans are looking for something cheaper for the basket. Something we can dye. Something we can fry.

This is the year of the Easter potato.

A carton of eggs that cost less than $4 last year costs more than $6 now. Crafty Americans experimented with ways to brighten up a basket without breaking the bank. They dyed marshmallows. They painted rocks. They elevated the potato to new fashion heights.

All the messy fun of dyeing an egg, with none of the pain of buying an egg.

If you want to experience the frugal charm of the Easter potato, here’s a step-by-step guide from someone who is typing this column with fingers deeply stained with blue food coloring. Do the opposite of almost everything I did and you’ll be just fine.

Step one: Potato.

I opted for the eggiest-looking potatoes I could find: the Petite Potato Medley from Trader Joe’s for $3.49. That got me 19 wee potatoes, all small enough to tuck into the pockets of an empty egg carton. Three of the potatoes had already been dyed red and purple by nature itself.

The price of everything is increasing, driven by Trump tariffs and the threat of Trump tariffs. A carton of eggs isn’t going to break most of us, but there’s a certain satisfaction that comes with saving a few bucks and making do with less.

Swapping potatoes for eggs reminded me of the mesh bag full of soap bars that hung in our closet when I was growing up. My mother would buy economy packs of Dial soap, unwrap the bars and hang them to cure in the open air for a few months. Curing the soap made it last longer. More money for us, less money for Big Soap.

Step two: Dye, potatoes, dye.

The internet is full of Easter potato instructions. None of them prepared me for my potatoes’ stubborn refusal to change color.

I decided to dye the potatoes while they were still raw. It seemed less squishy than the alternative. Public service announcement: Do not attempt to eat a raw potato, no matter how colorful. They will taste bad and make you feel worse. Fortunately, since I’m using food coloring, I can cook these later and turn them into tie-dye hashbrowns or something.

Eggs were easy to dye. All you needed was some water, a little vinegar, some food coloring and a spoon. The petite potato medley had the thin skin the Internet recommended, but an hourlong soak in some water and dye (the internet said to skip the vinegar) did almost nothing. They just sat there like a dud spud science project.

Step three: In which food coloring gets absolutely everywhere.

Eventually, I fished the potatoes out of their dye vats, plopped them in an empty egg carton and just dripped food coloring directly over them. This worked well. This worked too well.

I was running low on food coloring, so I shook the bottles and gave them a vigorous squeeze to dribble the color directly onto the potato skins. Dye splattered everywhere. My skin was blue, my table was blue, my dog was blue. But importantly, my potatoes were blue. And green. And red. And yellow. Plus that one potato that was purple already.

In retrospect, I probably should have used a paintbrush like the internet told me to. Don’t be like me. Don’t have a blue Easter.

Grocery shopping is a pain right now. But holiday traditions can still be a joy.

Enjoy your potatoes, Minnesota. Celebrate Hash Wednesday. Have a Good Fry-Day.