I've always believed that every true Southern Belle needs a deviled egg plate and to know how to make deviled eggs. I'm sure there are hundreds of recipes. One of the local grocery stores where I live has a plate lunch, and last week one of the ladies behind the counter said to me, "And we have stuffed eggs today, too, Sweety." Stuffed eggs? I'd never heard them called that, but it works.
As Traci and I were talking tonight about deviled eggs and Easter things and the different ways people decorate and hide eggs, I was reminded of several Easters when my mom, my brothers and sisters and I would go to my grandparents' house when they lived in Heavener, Oklahoma.
My Papa was in charge of maintenance at Heavener High School, and the three-bedroom home they lived in was right across the street from the school. Once again, we all thought it was the coolest thing for them to live right on campus! The house was situated on the edge of a field that was used for football parking, and the stadium loomed large in the distance. I remember it being brand new at the time, but that was in the early 70's.
One year, the City of Heavener had a community-wide Easter egg hunt on the Saturday before Easter, and my sister, Cheryl, who was maybe five or six at the time, found a prize egg! She won a big, stuffed rabbit and even got her picture taken for the newspaper. She was so very excited, and the rest of us were so very jealous. Some weeks later, my Nanny and Papa mailed her a copy of the newspaper clipping showing this tow-headed little girl smiling shyly at the camera along with the other prize egg finders.
One Easter when I was in sixth grade, I saved up my money and bought some pierced earrings in the shape of white gold crosses. My ears weren't pierced at the time, but I knew my Aunt Judy could do just about anything that had to do with cutting or fixing hair, and surely piercing ears wouldn't be an issue for her. We went to Ben Franklin's and bought the largest needle they had (no kidding). We numbed my ear with ice, and then Aunt Judy placed half of a potato behind my ear lobe and pierced both of my ears. Yes, it hurt, but I was never so proud than to have those shiny crosses in my ears on Easter Sunday morning.
As to the deviled eggs, I remember us dying 12 dozen eggs one year. There were a lot of us grandchildren, and it took quite a few eggs to fill our baskets. After church that day as my Nanny, my mom and my aunts were finishing up on the lunch preparations, all of the kids hid and hunted eggs. We had been at it for a while when I remember my Aunt Kaye Kaye coming out back to ask us for our cracked eggs. We didn't want to give up the eggs, but they were needed for deviling in the kitchen. As we looked through the baskets, some of the younger cousins cried to keep their broken eggs, but after some discussion and egg swapping, the crew reluctantly gave up our cracked eggs. After all, they were difficult to hide without getting grass stuck in them.
My Traci can't believe we used eggs that had been on the ground, that had been cracked open and that had been out of refrigeration for hours. But we did, and I lived to tell about it. I don't remember any of us getting sick from the double use of the Easter eggs either. My family was just being resourceful. Granted, many of the eggs were tossed out, but the better ones found their way onto the lunch menu.
It's funny, but one thing I do remember seeing was a little bit of Easter egg dye every now and then on the whites of the eggs on the deviled egg plate. I ate around that part.
