Eggs

Okay, so I've been wanting to write about this for a while, and, as is it most often is, it becomes very hard to write about something you want to write about. Eggs. They perked my interest when a friend was reading a book about them and started talking to me about souffles and other wonderful ways to prepare eggs. She was someone who wouldn't think twice about too many eggs. I agree, as long as I'm comfortable with where they are coming from. Check out the audio below if you can and hear about a jaunt out to the pasture-bound egg-house on wheels where I gather eggs once, sometimes twice a day.



Now I've been interested in eggs for my whole life, don't get me wrong. I am not a stranger to French Toast, and for the past few years I have been perfecting the pancake recipe to the first letter of my name. I just gotta say here, "Sonja, I am glad you kept your recipe from me, it challenged me to make the best pancakes ever". Eggs are an important part, however, and reading the part in Omnivore's Dilemma, when he is whipping up a chocolate souffle for friends he is staying with is an important part of my burgeoning fascination with what Joel Salatine's wife calls, 'henberries'. The very season the egg is produced has an effect on what an egg is good for. I found it amazing when I whipped some duck egg whites for a blackberry parfait a couple weeks ago, and am not too sure I could replicate it in the winter. And then it's gotta be asked, "Why would you want to?" Soon after I'd read Pollan's book, I heard on National Public Radio, a report from some fella who'd ran into a local foods diner and found that they were serving something different in the winter than the other seasons. Instead of fresh tomato they were serving pickled beet on top of a grilled patty. Their eggs tended to be treated differently too, though I don't remember what for, but an egg in the summer is going to have a greenish tint, because of the addition of lusher plant material in their diet.
Distinguishing the seasons in a supermarket egg, however, is going to be difficult. My boss says it can be up to six months before that egg gets to your table, not to mention how it even got into your hands. Generally those eggs ain't going to be too seasonal anyway, but I think y'all know the factory farm story. I have to admit, the eggs we sell at the farmer's market are sometimes in the walk-in cooler for a month. Whoa, before I run off on a tangent and spout a bunch of pro-this and anti-that, eating is an agricultural act, put your money where your mouth is country turned city turned country bull-ish, lemme finish.

Washing eggs: I was suprised that eggs needed to be washed, who knew? According to the Joy of Cooking, they don't. But I'll let you read into that. According to state law we, I'm told, have to wash 'em. This, I'm told, isn't done in Europe, however, and I'm sure a lot of other places around the world are similar. So why are we washing them. Look, I told you I don't want to get all "pro-this and anti-that". But I do want to encourage you to keep your own chickens that lay their own eggs, so you can see for yourself why a law like that might hit the table and get in the books.

It is something akin to the moon that an egg is laid. One morning when I was out I saw a few duck eggs out in the grass and thought, "Look some stars from above have come to earth to shine in the morning dew", well, not exactly that thought, but...I imagined those duck eggs reflecting where some stars are in the sky, yet unseen during the day, as they lay on the ground. It is amazing that an egg can speak so to the imagination. Akin to the moon because the moon comes around almost every night, and those that it doesn't makes it that much better when it comes back.

An egg, I'm told, was the topic of much philosophy during Socrate's time. I think some intellectuals were stating that this is just when the egg began to be included in culinary culture, atleast for the Greeks and Romans. Later perfected by the French, depending on your opinion, in so far as what is the best metal bowl to whisk an egg in and so on and so on. Well now we are in a time where we are discovering how not to raise our food, because it is affecting our health, and, yes, our taste. The difference, I can't emphasize enough, is overwhelming.

After cleaning eggs I get to take the cracked ones home and have even found that I prefer an egg that I can't get. We feed with non-organic feed, as do many family farmers, because its cheaper and contains an important defense against 'coxy', I'm told. While I'm comfortable now, because I feed the darn feed that goes into these eggs, I cannot help but remember those local, family farmed, organic eggs that I would get back home in Minneapolis. There was a level of care that hasn't quite circumvented the farm where I work, but I'm hoping consumer awareness will build. There's just something here that I can't quite put my finger on, which has consumers going somewhere else.

So where's my spine? Why don't I have a backbone to say something? Well, lemme tell ya, if I had the broadened perspective I need to talk to my boss about something like that, then I wouldn't be worried about not getting paid. Fact is, I should be so lucky to work for a family farm, lucky that his daughters moved on and didn't stay on the farm, lucky that I get this perspective while I can stand it. After a year I might say something, but, in the end, I know it's the consumers who'll have the final say.