This is nice to see since I’ve been feeding my one and four year-old eggs every morning. I was starting to feel guilty about giving it to them so much.
My wife and I have been eating more eggs as we try to be more meatless.
There’s a farm east of the city with 100 percent free roaming chickens and the bring them into town for central pickup locations. We get a flat of 20 every other week for 10 bucks per.
Anyway, with that many eggs, it’s nice to have a book like this and to get creative.
Favorites for us that are on regular rotation - breakfast for dinner.
Lentils and toast with salad - poached egg and feta on top of the lentils which we cook with aromatics.
Poached eggs with toast and smoked salmon.
Frittatas of different types.
My latest was made with leftover potato salad (recipe below) where I pan fried the potatoes and added the pesto and peas. Then spinach and feta before going under the broiler for a few.
I can see there being a point where you can in fact eat too many eggs. The poison is in the dose and all that. Just like a little alcohol can be good, while a lot is bad. Or a little salt is good but a lot is bad.
So basically, keep that diet well rounded.
I love eggs so much I got a few chickens to provide me with super fresh eggs every day (or at least every day in the spring/summer/fall). Fresh eggs are SOOO much better than store bought. Unfortunately I was diagnosed with egg allergies a month ago. Anyone want to adopt some chickens>?
Looks good! I wish I had my own chickens. There is a person at work who sells eggs from his home chickens, and I’ve been contemplating ordering from him for awhile now, and this post just gave me the incentive I needed to do so!
You see, unfortunately, Iowa (where I reside) is in the midst of a bird-flu epidemic at several of the largest egg producing facilities. Millions of birds had to be destroyed, and they actually got disaster area designation due to the economic impact this will have in the area (northwest, mostly). I am dreading the expected price increases, as I love eggs an chicken, and I can’t see how they are going to get production back up to pre-flu status quickly.
I don’t want to give up my eggs, so I’m going to email him and ask if he can handle supplying another person.
Eggs are the perfect food to prepare for a person learning to cook. If you can make a tasty dish with one ingredient and a pan then you have something to build on and the cook can tell the difference between well prepared and poorly prepared food. Having a good intuition for how eggs behave comes in handy for cooking anything with eggs in it (so many recipies) or figuring when an egg substitute is effective (flax meal works surprisingly well!).
A lot of alcohol is bad? I guess it’s fattening or something?
Try the okonomiyaki. My son learned to make it, and he’s still talking about itr six months later.
That really sucks, I’m so sorry.
Unfortunately there is more death and suffering per egg calorie than any other animal food. Right off the bat, 50% of egg laying chickens - the newborn males - are slaughtered, in terrible ways.
Don’t eat factory farmed eggs. Ethically raised eggs cost more, but are still inexpensive.
I’ve been to the farm I get my eggs from, and I live in a city of more than four million people. It’s not difficult to make better choices about where your food comes from.
I guess it’s hard to quantify suffering but there certainly aren’t more deaths per egg than any other animal food. For example, a shrimp has somewhere around the same number of calories as an egg, but every shrimp eaten equals one animal death whereas one chicken can lay well over 500 eggs in a lifetime. So unless you count each egg as an animal life that’s one or two dead chickens (if you count one dead male chick for each laying female) versus many hundreds of shrimp.
Like @ksnider says, there are also much more ethical options for where to procure your eggs. Many cities even allow residents to raise their own chickens (though typically no more than three or so).
Hi Brainspore - really interesting answer; thanks. The SA article focused on terrestrial farmed animals, and also takes into account lifetime egg production per hen. (See the chart.) Although it would be very worthwhile to do the same analysis for sea animals.
re the ethical options - most backyard farms get their chickens from companies that kill the males; also what will the backyard farmers do with their chickens once their productivity is decreased? Even in the humanest scenario there is a lot of suffering. It’s better to go vegan and not be implicated in it, esp. as there are other protein and nutrient sources.
Also eggs are not the panacea food they’re made out to be. They contain cholesterol of course, but also they can concentrate toxins - and some research is showing that there are more toxins in backyard-raised eggs. http://www.coda-cerva.be/index.php?option=com_content&id=147&Itemid=306&lang=en
That reminds me: we used to call it egg fu young. Heaven knows what the real Chinese name is, but it’s an easy and nutritious way to use whatever happens to be in the produce drawer and needs eating.
Cor. Haven’t had foo young in years. There’s a blast from the past…
I respect those who go vegan because they want no part in animal death or suffering. But for those who do choose to eat animal products there are a few factors to consider when deciding which are most “ethical,” namely:
- Environmental impact & sustainability
- Number of animals impacted
- How much suffering did the animals endure
- How intelligent and relatable is this species (let’s face it, most people feel worse about a chimpanzee’s death than a mosquito’s)
If you made a decision on what kind of meat to eat just based on “number of animal deaths per calorie” then far and away the best bang for your buck would be whale meat—a single mature blue whale could provide enough meat for hundreds of thousands of individual meals. However, few people now consider whaling an “ethical” source of food, not only because whales are known to be social and intelligent animals but also because they are endangered.
Meanwhile crickets are now being lauded as a more environmentally sustainable source of food protein because they require far fewer resources per calorie to raise than larger food animals. But again, if you’re just going on “how many critters died for this meal” then they’re one of the worst things out there.
Regarding the bigger question of animal suffering, one question I find useful isn’t just “what happens to the chickens after they can’t lay anymore,” but “how does this chicken’s life and death compare to what a wild bird’s life would be?” If I can be reasonably sure that the chickens laying my eggs are as comfortable and fulfilled as they would be in a natural environment then I probably won’t feel quite so guilty about the way I’m exploiting them for food.
Wiki to the rescue!
That’s a lot of farting.
No such thing as too many eggs.
… and two hard boiled eggs.
