naturally food dyed easter eggs

i'm on the hunt for making simple changes in every nook and cranny in the name of "green" and "natural" and safe and also cheap (although i'm finding green/natural/safe alternatives are anything but cheap most times).  this easter egg solution was so fun and easy! the recipes for these colors and several more were listed on lakewinds' website.

tumeric = yellow, red cabbage = blue, red cabbage + tumeric = green, red beets = pink

and about those cracked eggs....that's called too much happening at once; woops! how do YOU cook your hard cooked eggs?  i do the betty crocker method: bring water to a boil, add eggs (that's where my woops happened), off heat and cover for 18 minutes.  when i took my cooking class with my favorite chef jesus, he laughed and said i boil the eggs for 5ish minutes and then spin them to see if they are done (he literally took one out and spun it on the stovetop like a dreidle and if it stood up, that was your sign that all was well. i tried it; didn't do the same neat little spin for me. huh. must consider chef school. lol).  pete wasn't too interested in the process and i was ok with it grateful because one flailing arm and we could have had a bright red beet stained petey. he did like to check in on them occasionally throughout the morning, declaring the "o-ster eggs pretty". thanks, bud.

is this how they dyed easter eggs in the "good old days" before they had the little dye kits? or were they so busy milking cows back them they didn't dye easter eggs? i'm curious!