IN SWITZERLAND ONION SKINS ARE MORE EXPENSIVE THAN ACTUAL ONIONS
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ith Easter just
around the corner, Christians around the world are stocking up on eggs and
dyes for the traditional egg dyeing. But while most of us have grown used to
chemical dyes, some still prefer the natural approach, like boiling white eggs
with onion skins.
This is apparently very popular in Switzerland, where people
actually pay for bags of onion peels selected specifically for egg dyeing.
Dyeing Easter
eggs with onion skins is not a Swiss tradition. In fact, I remember my mother
used to do it when I was little, taking differed plant leaves, and placing them
on the eggs before wrapping them in a large onion skin, putting them in a sock
and boiling them in a pot of water with more skins thrown in for a more intense
coloring effect. But she used orange skins saved up for weeks in advance,
instead of buying them from the supermarket, like some Swiss do nowadays.
Ukrainian
newspaper The
Observer recently published an article on the practice of selling packaged
onion skins in Swiss supermarkets. They apparently received a series of
pictures from readers who had recently traveled to the Solothurn canton of
Switzerland and were surprised to find bags of skins on sale in several shops
and supermarkets. They snapped some photos and asked their tour guide about
them. Turns out onion skins are very popular around Easter.
The pictures
published by The Observer show that a 85-gram bag of onion skins costs up
to 2.80 Swiss francs ($2.84), which means that a kilogram goes for 33 francs
($33.5).
That’s outrageously expensive considering that the same supermarket
sells a pound of onions for just 2.80 francs. Granted, you’re not going to get
as much skins from them. READ MORE
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