Eggs, simplicity in their own right. Delicious. The perfect fast food. The stuff of cakes and all manner of goodies.
Lots of people round here keep chickens. I used to have a lovely little gang of them. There was Tim the cockerel (Tim Henman, for those who might recall tennis of a few years back) who ate biscuits from the kitchen window. A couple of manic English Game hens who practically killed each other, not the restful chooks I had imagined. The speckled hen and a whole host of normal brown birds. My favourite of all was Hattie the Cream Legbar. She had tufts of feathers on top of her head, hence the name. She was peaceful and chatty in a chicken like way, not given to long quotes of Shakespeare or anything, just a sort of comforting chuckling sound. Her greatest accomplishment though, was the fact that she laid gorgeous blue eggs. I love keeping chickens that lay different colours of eggs. Oh the boredom of the brown egg so favoured by the hybrid brown chicken that everybody seems to have because they pop out eggs like a bloody machine. Give me a proper old fashioned chicken that doesn’t lay as much but creates masterpieces of colour and taste.
I buy my eggs from the lady down the lane who has a great mixed gang of chickens and lovely cream, white and (oh yes had to be there) brown eggs. Each week I grab a box from the little table at her front gate and pop my money in the honesty box. We really do have sophisticated shopping round these parts.
Anyway the gist of this post was meant to be a Home Hint about eggs and how to test if eggs are fresh, afterall this is the most important issue when you are using eggs, wherever they have come from. I seem to have wandered off into a chicken world and lost the plot a bit but this important for your health so read on……
Often when you buy eggs in the shops they have been hanging around for quite some time. In fact very often about 3 weeks!
Here’s How To Test If Eggs Are Fresh;
To test if your eggs are fresh you need only two tools – a mug and water to fill said mug.
Fill the mug with water and carefully drop in one egg. If the egg stays at the bottom of the mug it is fresh.
Should the egg stand on its end and wobble a bit, it is usable NOW.
Should the egg merrily float upwards and bob about on the top of the mug, well sorry folks, this one is WAY past the sell by and has to be trashed.
Do this with each of your eggs.
Here endeth the lesson in eggs and all things chickeny for today…….
Karon x
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