Viva Teeny Eggs!

In today's American culture, bigger is better. A soda at the gas station should be at least a quart. A sub sandwich should be a foot long. A family car should be an SUV. A starlet should have C-cup boobs, even if she only weighs about 105 pounds.

I don't agree with "bigger is better," especially as I have grown older. Having to get bigger pants is downright annoying!

Now see that big brown egg? That's a Jumbo Organic Brown egg, and we purchased two flats of them at the poultry farm down the road from us. Their hens were laying so many Jumbo Browns that we got two flats for $5 -- 40 eggs. In a store, for Large Organic Brown eggs, we'd be paying between $3.99 and $4.99 a dozen for them. And at the poultry farm, they're so fresh and healthy and delicious ... well, we don't buy eggs at the store any more.

Delicious as that Jumbo brown egg will be over corned beef hash, it doesn't hold a candle to the teeny egg beside it.

A good friend of ours has a big back yard, and she's been raising Bantam Silkie chickens. She and her family came to dinner at our house last weekend, and she brought us a dozen of her flock's beautiful, ivory-colored little eggs.

What a treasure! What a fine gift! The flavor and texture of the Silkie eggs far surpasses any other egg I have ever had. The yolks are intensely orange, and so delicious that eating even the poultry farm's good eggs seems like a punishment.

Now I do get a kick out of occasionally buying Super-Jumbo eggs, which are almost comically huge, but from now on, my heart belongs to Teeny.

Simple Things

We went to the Egg Place to buy eggs today.

Commercial producers of eggs for local markets, Den Dulk also has its own retail outlet a couple miles down the road. We buy our eggs there not only because they are inexpensive, but mostly because they are so fresh and taste sooooooooooo good.

Today, we found that the young hens are still producing a myriad of Medium Brown Organic eggs.

Hot dog, we say, that means we get five dozen eggs for $3 -- beats paying $3.69 or more at the store for Organic Brown Eggs.

When I picked up the flats of eggs, I had a look at them, and said to the cashier, "Wow, these are absolutely beautiful!"

She giggled nervously, and said in an offhand kind of way, "Yeah, uh ... simple pleasures, right?"

Obviously, she didn't think I was serious.

But I was. Look at these eggs. They are works of art. Technically they are all "Medium Brown Eggs" but what a difference in each of them! One such a dark brown; one so light with a dark cloud sketched upon it. Speckles, freckles, on the others, darker, lighter, in a cap-like pattern ...

I really meant it. They are beautiful.

Tasted So Good!

Breakfast of taters and eggs.

We buy our eggs from a poultry farm out the road, usually five dozen at a time, not only because they are less expensive than in the stores, but also because they are so fresh and delicious.

They've just switched over to a batch of young hens, and the young ladies are not producing "large" eggs. They're producing lots of "mediums" just yet, but the demand is for "Large." Large gets shipped to the stores first, and then what is left is being snapped up by local customers before noon.

Now the big fat old hens are still laying plenty of eggs ... but they're the wrong size, too. They're laying "jumbo" and "super-jumbo." In fact, they're laying so many Super Jumbos that the poultry farm was selling the Super Jumbos at half-price.

Super Jumbos are too big to go through the scrubbing and candling machine, so they're a bit dirty, and they're not guaranteed to be perfectly pretty inside. Still, getting two flats of Super Jumbos meant I got three dozen eggs for $2.50, and I don't mind washing them. Indeed, it's kind of fun to do the candling, holding the clean egg next to a bright flashlight to view the yolk within.

These eggs are HUGE. And every single one of them is a double-yolker. That's ... six dozen eggs for that price, how's that for a bargain?