Actually, I gave a 1/2 dozen to a coworker earlier this week, and I've been eating 2-3 eggs most days, so even though it's the first time I've had an egg container full, there's been more than a dozen eggs given by my 5 ladies.
Here's an amusing thing ... I offered to bring some eggs in for my boss and he paused for a bit and said, "um, yeah, OK. We'll try some." And this ... the coworker, who has the space next to mine said, "will the eggs stay fresh until the weekend?" They both have this idea that my eggs are somehow weird and different from the eggs they get at the store. I understand. I was that way too not too long ago.
I've gotten 4 eggs most days this week which is more than I expected out of the 5 hens. I had this idea that each hen will lay an egg 2 days out of 3, or something like that? Maybe that does work out to 4 eggs a day, but somehow I expected 3 eggs a day. Don't ask me to recreate how I calculated that! I'll take every egg they want to give me!
Tell them grocery store eggs take an average of 1-2 weeks to arrive on store shelves. Regardless of what the sign says. Farm-fresh eggs are exactly that - fresh. And (little known secret) eggs will stay in the fridge for a few months. Yeah, doesn't sound appealing to me either, but it's true. You learn all kinds of things in 4-H...
ReplyDeleteHere's another little-known fact. Eggs don't need to be refrigerated. In Europe, eggs are sold on normal, non-refrigerated shelves. I'm Amurican so I keep my eggs cold, but they're much more bulletproof (aside from the shell) than we think. My opinion: eggs are the perfect food.
ReplyDeleteIt's just funny how my coworkers seem to be a bit scared of real, fresh eggs. They'd rather not look at the chicken butt their breakfast came out of.
Oh wow - I thought I was the only one who thought that way! I laugh at myself now that something so fresh could be considered so weird and scary. It's not like they put preservatives in store bought eggs. I bet people would be shocked at how old the eggs are before they even get to the store!
ReplyDeleteWhen I lived in England, it's true - they did sell the eggs on the regular shelf at room temperature. All of my fellow students were completely weirded out by that and kept the eggs in the fridge anyway (using valuable space!). I went with the flow and kept them on a shelf in the kitchen.
I think it's interesting that stuff made or processed at home is treated with such suspicion (like canning). We're trained to think that stuff at the store is safer and that we should trust all those "professionals" to handle our food.
My ex used to work at an egg "factory"- so I saw the conditions they were stored and handled under - meaning not refrigerated! At least not while they were on the sorting/packaging floor! Just as Melanie said, the eggs you buy at the store are already a week or two old when you get them, so *really* fresh eggs will keep much longer than the ones you buy in the supermarket! My current DH got all freaked out one day when he forgot to put the eggs in the fridge after shopping and they stayed out all night - it was a piece of work convincing him that they would be fine and not to worry about it!
ReplyDeleteWe've even had someone refuse a gift of our fresh eggs saying that they just didn't care for the flavor of fresh eggs. Each to their own!
ReplyDeleteI had a tax client bring me some papers he'd signed and 2 dozen fresh brown eggs. We celebrated by having breakfast one evening this week!!
ReplyDeleteI recall from reading a couple books about food supply and food contamination that once salmonella began showing up in the egg supply in the U.S., eggs were required to be refrigerated during transportation and in the stores so the salmonella couldn't thrive. About twenty or thirty years ago I think?? Of course, this was instead of just requiring (and enforcing) that the salmonella be eliminated from the eggs in the first place. I may be wrong, bu that's what I remember.
ReplyDeleteIt was not even 2 years ago that I touched my first "real" egg in Montana (near Red Lodge - beautiful country!), warm from the source. I asked the lady I was staying with, "Do we just eat it now?" I thought we had to irradiate it or pasteurize it or something. She very kindly kept a straight face and said, "No, we wash it first. Then we eat it."
ReplyDeleteIt hurts to know how so many of our laws codify practice to cover up or kill bad stuff - which just punishes people who do the hard work to make sure there's no bad stuff to kill!