The Incredible Egg Story

If you are old enough, you will remember an ad campaign for eggs that touted “The Incredible Edibile Egg”.  And incredible they are, for many reasons! Eggs are all-natural and packed with a number of nutrients. One egg has 13 essential vitamins and minerals, high-quality protein, unsaturated fats and antioxidants, all for just 70 calories.    They can be dyed, fried, baked and boiled.  They can also be poached, scrambled,  coddled, and deviled.

Eggs are a part of our culture in other ways as well.   Think about it .  You can be a good egg or a bad egg. Some people are egg heads. Some have egg on their face. Or a goose egg on their forehead. Some people put all their eggs in one basket, walk on egg shells, lay an egg, egg others on or protect their nest egg.  And which child hasn’t heard “Last one in’s a rotten egg!”?

Chicken eggs are by far the most popular worldwide.  So much so that it was determines in 2009, that 6.4 billion hens laid 64.1 metric tons of eggs….now that’s a lot of eggs!

As I have mentioned in earlier posts, we keep chickens in our back garden.  My little chickens are doing their part everyday to add to the world wide statistics.  We currently have 8 chickens, Bianca, Coco,Dahlia, Daisy, Giselle, Lilli, Lola and Yvette.  From these eight chickens we average about 5 eggs a day.  Sometimes a few more and some days less.  This is because not all chickens lay every day.  The majority of our eggs are brown or light tan in color.  But Bianca lays beautiful pale blue eggs and Yvette lays lovely sage green eggs (I’ll tell you the rest of this story later).  Regardless of the color of the shells, the eggs are all the same inside and they are all very delicious!

The yolks of the our chicken’s eggs tend to be a very bright yellow.  This is because the chickens get plenty of sun and lots of good things to eat.  They are what is known as free range chickens, which simply means they are not kept in a coop all day but have the run of the back garden to forage for food in addition to the organic food we provide for them.

There is really nothing any tastier than a fresh egg, unless it is 2 or 3 fresh eggs made into an omelette.  Making a really good French style omelette is a simple matter and can be served any time of the day or evening.

Here is a how-to for making a great omelette whether you have fresh eggs from your own chickens or from the grocery store.

Perfect Omelette

2-3 eggs
butter
salt and pepper
fresh herbs, cheese and vegetables are all optional

For this omelette we used tarragon, thyme, and chives, as well as feta cheese and roasted red peppers.

Start by adding 1-2 tablespoons of butter to a small frying or omelette pan.

Crack eggs and add about 1/4 teaspoon of salt and a pinch of pepper

Add herbs to the melted butter in the pan and cook for about 1 minute on a medium low flame.  This is just enough to warm the herbs and allow their flavor to be released.

Add eggs to herbs and butter

Allow eggs to begin to set up over a low flame.  The idea here is to let the eggs become firmer without browning them on the side touching the pan.  The mistake most people make is being in too much of a hurry.  If your heat is too high the butter will start to get brown and so will your omelette, so be patient, this may take 3-4 minutes.  Once it starts to set up use a rubber spatula to lift the edges of the egg all around the pan so that the omelette can slide around on it’s own if you wiggle the pan.

When the eggs are mostly set and looking firm, add the cheese and peppers (or whatever additions you’ve chosen for your omelette.)

Allow your ingredients to warm in the pan for a minute or so, then, using your rubber spatula, fold the right side of the omelette over into thirds like you are folding a letter. (If you are left handed just reverse this and start on the left side of the pan.)

Now continue folding the eggs again another turn as you would with a letter being folded.

Slide the whole omelette out of the pan using your spatula to guide it.

And there it is…the Perfect Omelette!

Now, just add some fruit, or a small salad of any kind and some fresh bread and  maybe a glass of your favorite wine and voila! …you have the perfect breakfast, brunch, lunch or late supper:)

Bianca lays blue eggs and Yvette lays green ones.  As I mentioned earlier, here is what radio host, Paul Harvey, referred to as “The Rest of the Story”.

When I was preparing for this particular post, I began putting our eggs into ceramic egg cartons so as to be able to shoot some photos and have them look ‘pretty’.  Since we only get about 4-5 blue eggs a week, I was putting them aside.  To my knowledge, Yvette had only ever laid 2 eggs, and one had already been eaten, so I was being very deliberate and stingy in setting aside the blue and green eggs for my special photo for today’s post.  Brown eggs on the other hand were no problem, we had 2 dozen of those.

The other evening  I finally had six of the blue and green eggs and I thought about taking a photo then, but my camera was upstairs and the light wasn’t so good, so I opted to wait and take the photo the next morning.  When I got up, I went out to let the chickens out of the coop where they sleep and to feed them.  This is always a happy start to my day.  As I went out of the door my husband Randy called to me “How about if I make breakfast this morning?”  “Sure”, I replied and kept walking towards the coop…I was on a mission.  When I returned to my horror I found the broken shells of 6 blue and green eggs, 6 eggs in a bowl ready to be beaten up and scrambled, and a smiling husband who was very pleased with himself for “helping” me by starting breakfast.

Now remember, they were sitting there, still perfectly in tact, 2 dozen brown eggs.  I surveyed the situation and then asked because I was completely bewildered by his choice, “Why did you use the only 6 blue and green eggs we had when there were so many brown ones you could have used?”

“What difference does it make?” he inquired a little annoyed at my tone.  “Couldn’t you just say ‘thank you for making breakfast’ instead of being aggravated with me for using the blue eggs?”  “Yes” I said,  “I do appreciate your effort, but I needed those eggs for my photo and I now don’t have time to wait another week to get another 6 colored eggs.”  Somehow our breakfast didn’t taste as good that morning…everything seemed a little sour if you know what I mean.

“Well” I thought to myself, “How am I going to get that photo?”  What happened next could have been straight out of an episode of I Love Lucy.  I pulled the blue and green shells out of the trash and proceeded to try and put them together in a way so as to not show the breaks in the shells.  This way I reasoned I could still take my precious photo…. and I did a pretty good job too!

The problem was that I was still a little frustrated that I couldn’t take the photo I wanted to take because I was so focused on not having what I thought I was supposed to have.

If you have been following us on Two Chums for any amount of time, you have no doubt figured out that Jackie and I both operate out a place that believes God will supply all our needs…he is the source of all that is good.  Somehow in my sticking broken eggs back together I had obviously had a temporary lapse in this knowledge.  So on I went struggling to make broken eggs look like whole eggs for  photo I had conjured in my own imagination.  I spent WAY to much time on this silly exercise!

Several hours later that afternoon, my 5 year old granddaughter, Savannah was out in the back garden with our housekeeper Maria (who is really a house, dog, cat, chicken, child and adult keeper…she is a gem..we LOVE her!)  Anyway, Savannah came running in the house calling me wildly “Lolli, Lolli , Lolli come now there are 5 eggs!”  Since I had already gathered the eggs from the coop earlier that afternoon, I had no idea what she was talking about.  It seems Yvette, our green egg laying chicken, had gone missing for quite a while and Maria figured out she must be hiding somewhere to lay eggs in a place other than the laying boxes in the chicken coop where the rest of the chickens lay their eggs.  So Maria went investigating and came across a “nest” Yvette had made for herself out by the side of the garage.

But Savannah was wrong in the count.  There weren’t 5 eggs as she had originally announced to me.  There were 23 eggs!!!!!  ….5 brown and 18 green eggs.  Yvette had been busy and one of her friends had apparently joined her in her nest  a few times.

Now you are either tracking with me here as to spiritual significance of this event, or you will think I need to check in to Charter Hospital for some mental testing.  To me this was a wonderful lesson and reminder from God that He is abundant in what He can do.  While I was lamenting my lack of blue and green eggs and trying to glue broken shells together, He had already supplied way more than I could ever have imagined!  It reminded me so clearly of  a promise in a Bible verse I had learned as a child,  “And my God will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 4:19

So now you know “The Rest of the Story”.  If only I could just stay fully focused on this knowledge of God’s goodness how much more love, joy, and abundant living I would experience 🙂