2nd egg

Yesterday I got the second egg from my hen Lulu. In Europe when you go to buy eggs, you don’t find them in the refrigerated section of the grocery store. They sit in big open cartons on the shelf. This makes most Americans squeamish about bacteria, salmonella, and anything else that could make them sick. It’s pretty cold in my apartment, so I think I’m somewhere in the middle of this debate by having them on my kitchen table. I may re-think this in the summer.

I have to admit that I’m having a hard time thinking about eating these eggs. Part of it is the novelty of them. They are pretty, little greenish-gray objects. I hate to admit that I have been so programmed to buy brown or white eggs from a carton in the grocery store, that I’m feeling a little squeamish. Eggs from my backyard? Seems as unlikely as picking fruit off one of my trees. I have been working so hard not to have this cultural programming in my daughter by planting blueberry bushes at her grandparent’s house, going to goat farms, picking wild raspberries and blackberries, eating icicles. She wants me to make her scrambled eggs with these eggs already! I think she will help me get over the preciousness and oddity of homegrown eggs.

Mother Earth News has been testing the nutrients of pastured eggs compared with those of commercial eggs. Pastured eggs meaning that they are eggs from hens that are allowed to roam and supplement their grain-based diet with plants such as grass and insects. Eating plants adds beta carotene to their diet and eating insects benefits almost everyone else.

The pastured eggs contained:
1/3 less cholesterol
1/4 less saturated fat
2/3 more vitamin A
2 times more omega-3 fatty acids
3 times more vitamin E
7 times more beta carotene

That’s pretty impressive. I think I’ll make Lindsay those eggs for breakfast tomorrow!

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