all about eggs
When folks hear about our chickens, they—naturally—always want to know how many eggs we get. When they hear that, in the summer, it's three or four a day, they wonder what we do with that many eggs. While we do try and save some to give away (and hope to get more hens someday to make that even easier) the fact is it's not hard for us to use three or four eggs a day.
Aside from the baking, which can easily absorb a good half of the inflow, we do enjoy our breakfast eggs. Generally the boys and I go with either scrambled or fried—we tend to streaks of one or the other. I like my fried egg (sunny side up, of course) on toast, while Harvey prefers his directly on the plate with the toast on the side, because he can't cut it otherwise (he asks for "the dipping kind of egg", which in our household is not soft-boiled). Zion at this stage mostly just likes pieces of the white, since fried egg yolks are a little tough to grapple with by hand. I fry eggs in just a little bit of butter and keep the heat fairly low, so the whites don't get rubbery or very browned at all. Lots of salt and pepper on top at the end.
When I'm feeling fancy I whisk the eggs for scrambled in a bowl with a little bit of milk, and occasionally chives in the springtime (though Harvey's not really a fan). But you can make surprisingly good scrambled eggs just scrambling them in the pan in a good bit of butter; that's what I do when I'm making eggs on special request for a particularly persuasive child, or when we're making "eggs in a sandwich" and don't need the extra delicacy the milk brings. I like mine with cheese (American, natch), Harvey takes a half with no cheese, and Zion just want the egg part with untoasted bread on the side. It all works out well since our toaster can only manage three slices at a time, so I don't know what we're going to do in a couple months as the little one's eating advances. I also try and get by with only scrambling three eggs for the three of us, but already that's pushing at the edge of early morning starvation.
When there's leftover black beans I do enjoy making myself a breakfast burrito, a taste which no one else yet seems to share. One scrambled egg is enough, though two is a possibility as well, on top of some cream cheese spread on a tortilla; then the beans, reheated, and some salsa. The cream cheese softens wonderfully and it all tastes oh-so-wholesome and filling.
We only very occasionally do omelets, mostly as a special treat for Leah to entice her to join us for breakfast (the reason she's absent from all the deliciousness above is because she likes to get her chores done in the morning, and also because she tends to breakfast on soup or heaven-knows what else). Hard-boiled eggs are only if anyone wants to make egg salad immediately following, which in practice is only ever for summer picnics (and it turns out to be pretty hard to shell really fresh eggs that have been hard-boiled). Poached and soft-boiled are both awaiting exploration at a later date.
So when I see chicken-keeping coffee-table books (yes, that is a thing) with fully a third of their pages taken up with exotic egg recipes designed to deal with an expected surplus, I wonder if the authors are missing something (like breakfast, and dessert too). We don't have any problems in that direction here.
comments
I always think, 2 or 4 a day..man we'd need so many chickens to feed our family ;) ha ha. But seriously when people at the CSA worry about what they'll do with a dozen eggs, I always want to volunteer to help out. A dozen eggs is almost enough for our breakfast here...almost.