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« Permaculture Gardening
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Glorious Eggs

July 3, 2010 by Celia @ Fig Jam and Lime Cordial

Our chickens have started laying.

Over the last couple of days, they’ve given us four little eggs.  They’re quite small – between 43 to 49 grams (yes, I weighed them), which is hardly surprising, since our girls are still very young.

Here’s one of them next to the standard 59g egg that we buy from the markets…

As I’m now chicken obsessed, I have, of course, been researching eggs.   I was interested to learn that there are two layers of albumin – a thick inner layer and a thinner outer one.  As the egg ages, the thick layer becomes watery and indistinguishable from the thin layer.

Our little eggs are so fresh that the thick albumin hasn’t started to break down at all.  This one was laid the day the photo was taken…

It made the most delicious poached egg.  Pete thinks the lovely golden yolk is a product of all the dandelions he’s been feeding the hens!

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Posted in Frugal Living | Tagged backyard chickens, homegrown eggs | 32 Comments

32 Responses

  1. on July 3, 2010 at 12:52 am sallybr

    Beautiful eggs, and the color of that yolk is amazing!

    Poached eggs, fried eggs, I love them all, but I do think poaching brings the best, most pure flavor

    Enjoy them!


  2. on July 3, 2010 at 1:37 am heidiannie

    I hadn’t ever thought about it, really, but I think that fresh laid eggs are really perfect for poached eggs with their extra thick layer of albumin. I’m using the freshest eggs for poached from now on! Thanks for the lesson!


  3. on July 3, 2010 at 4:18 am Susan MacDonald

    Oddly, my sister-in-law who grew up on a farm with chickens running loose now hates dark yolk eggs and would never buy them, even though she and my brother eat very healthily. Lighter the better as far as she is concerned! Me? I like ’em like yours.
    Cheers, susan


  4. on July 3, 2010 at 4:30 am buttercup600

    It’s 4.30am here, why on earth I’m awake, no-one knows!! And here you make me hungry again girlfriend!! Looks delicious!! Have a wonderful weekend ~ Amanda


  5. on July 3, 2010 at 4:47 am Suelle

    What a glorious colour. They should give your cakes a good colour, if you get enough to bake with.


  6. on July 3, 2010 at 4:55 am dana

    glorious indeed! it just stands up in the pan when it’s that fresh! i got a little crazy, too, when we got eggs from the small farm where we picked strawberries. the yolk was almost orange and the white tight around it. i’ve read it’s the protein that gives the hue, together with the caroten that’s in certain plants. i have no clue if there’s any of that in dandelions :)
    congrats & enjoy!


  7. on July 3, 2010 at 5:07 am Bethany

    I love fresh eggs! I used to live by a duck pond, and my brother and I would go hunting for duck eggs several times a week. I would keep chickens if I didn’t live in NYC.


  8. on July 3, 2010 at 5:59 am Celia @ Fig Jam and Lime Cordial

    Thank you all! Interestingly, the yolks on our eggs are more of a golden yellow – the ones we buy are much darker. I’m not sure what it all means, but ours are delicious! (Ok, I might be biased.. :)).


  9. on July 3, 2010 at 7:55 am C

    They do look amazing Celia – you must be so pleased that the girls have started laying!


  10. on July 3, 2010 at 8:01 am bagnidilucca

    Lucky you with those delicious fresh eggs!


  11. on July 3, 2010 at 8:17 am Celia @ Fig Jam and Lime Cordial

    C, personally I think it was the leftover pizza that finally did the trick! :)

    Debra, thank you, we are feeling very blessed! :)


  12. on July 3, 2010 at 11:12 am Sarah @ For the Love of Food

    How exciting! I can imagine I’d be out there every few hours to see if there were any more:)

    A good friend has kept chickens for several years now and it seems that the yolk gets more colour depending on what you feed them (although I don’t think it changes their nutritional value).

    I remember when I was given some pullet eggs by same friend and used them peeled and cut in half semi-hard boiled on top of a salad – they looked very sophisticated (like a pigeon egg I guess).


  13. on July 3, 2010 at 4:02 pm GillthePainter

    I wish I lived round the corner from you Celia.

    I’d have scrambled eggs for breakfast, plenty of butter on the bread.
    & strong black coffee.

    & I’d be making a frisee salad tonight with a wobbly, almost clear white poached egg on top.

    Well done those young chickens!


  14. on July 3, 2010 at 4:15 pm Anna

    Is the shell thicker than the shell of shop bought eggs? I bought organic eggs at the market direct from the producer and I had trouble cracking them!


  15. on July 3, 2010 at 4:28 pm Celia @ Fig Jam and Lime Cordial

    Sarah, or a quail’s egg, perhaps? The little eggs are very cute – the boys ate the other three this morning for breakfast…scrambled!

    Gill, you would be more than welcome, and hopefully you’d arrive with a loaf of sourdough on the back of your bike.. :)

    Anna, the shell is thicker, but I think that’s because we’ve given them a small bowl of grit to peck at if they choose. The FR eggs we buy at the markets always have quite thin shells – not sure what that means…


  16. on July 3, 2010 at 9:06 pm Lorraine @ Not Quite Nigella

    Congratulations Celia! What an awesome moment when they start laying eggs. And yes you can definitely see how fresh they are from the albumen and how gloriously golden the yolks are!


  17. on July 4, 2010 at 12:07 am frances

    I suspect some kind of colouring is involved with nice dark coloured commercial eggs (except the organic ones I buy, I hope!) Just wondering what colour the yolks would go if you gave the biddies a feed of left over beetroot!


  18. on July 4, 2010 at 2:06 am Joanna @ Zeb Bakes

    Ah, I poached day before yesterday and the eggs didn’t behave at all well, so now I know why :) In fact we had a conversation about why sometimes the white sets neatly round the yolk and other times not, it’s all a bit wild in the swirly water of the saucepan, do you poach free form or in a little holder wotsit….

    Well done the girls, btw I am going to hitch a ride on Gill’s parcel carrier…..


  19. on July 4, 2010 at 4:56 am lifeinarecipe

    The eggs look lovely…soon you will not want to ever eat a store bought egg again! I think your girls are a very happy lot!


  20. on July 4, 2010 at 6:54 am Kitchen Butterfly

    The fruits of labour…….on the table. I love runny yolks with a pinch of salt! Congratulations.


  21. on July 4, 2010 at 7:38 am Celia @ Fig Jam and Lime Cordial

    Thank you all!

    Jo, I poached freeform – swirling the salted boiling water and dropping the room temperature egg in, then putting the lid on and leaving it for a few minutes. I’ve found that these fresh eggs cook much faster than older ones – Pete suggested it’s because their protein chains haven’t broken down yet. Which may be why some recipes such as macarons always specify using old egg whites.

    Cindy, I already don’t want to buy eggs ever again! Not sure how feasible that will be though.. :)


  22. on July 4, 2010 at 9:28 am Chef Dennis

    now how great can that be to have fresh eggs …..you can see how fresh it is the way the white stands up…..I am so envious!!! growing up we would drive a few miles to a farm for fresh eggs….you just can’t find them around here…..fresh here is only two weeks old….lol
    thanks for sharing!


  23. on July 4, 2010 at 9:54 am Celia @ Fig Jam and Lime Cordial

    Chef, I know, we’re so fortunate! The girls are laying right now, and it’s taking all my willpower to not go out and badger them to lay faster! Thanks for stopping by.. :)


  24. on July 4, 2010 at 10:43 pm Christine

    Fantastically glorious, Celia! It’s funny, but I never noticed how shop bought eggs were runny in the whites until we started keeping our own chickens and observed how plump the eggs are when fresh. Just beautiful!!

    Re. the hard shelled eggs…I have used some guinnea fowl eggs in the past and they are ridiculously hard to crack…it’s almost comical. :o)


  25. on July 4, 2010 at 11:05 pm Sophie

    Stunning looking eggs, dear Celia!!

    Thanks for the info on eggs too! Very interesting too!

    You are so fortunate to have your own hens & your own eggs!! There is nothing better then that!


  26. on July 5, 2010 at 5:59 am Celia @ Fig Jam and Lime Cordial

    Christine, Sophie, we’re now getting 2 to 3 eggs every day! If this keeps up, we’ll have eggs to share.. :)


  27. on July 5, 2010 at 7:22 am Maria

    These eggs would be amazing! Great job!


  28. on July 5, 2010 at 10:19 am InTolerantChef

    Never, never hard boil fresh eggs. The membrane is too attatched to the white and when you try to peel off the shell you lose most of the whites.
    Once in mid winter, one of my chickens laid a shell-less egg! They had been too cold and miserable to go out of their cage and the shell grit hadn’t been touched for a while, I guess it didn’t seem appetising at minus temps! We changed their feed and sent them out to play in the cold and they soon got back to normal.
    Good luck with your chickies!


  29. on July 5, 2010 at 10:21 am InTolerantChef

    Ooops, it makes much more sense to explain that the egg was perfectly formed and just held together by the membrane. Apart from having no shell, it was perfectly formed. I guess the chicken thought it was her lucky day!


  30. on July 5, 2010 at 3:09 pm Celia @ Fig Jam and Lime Cordial

    Maria, thank you, although I’m not doing anything…hehe

    Chef, thank you for that advice! I will definitely not boil them for very long. Apparently the shell-less eggs aren’t uncommon (as I said, I’ve been reading up about eggs!) – has she ever laid another one though? We’ve just given our chickens new laying boxes – raised off the ground – and they seem much happier with those…


  31. on July 8, 2010 at 6:15 am Robyn Sherrie

    I’m so excited for you Celia! I had been wondering how the girls were coping with this cold, damp weather. Fresh scrambled eggs on sourdough for breakie…mmmm


  32. on July 8, 2010 at 4:41 pm Celia @ Fig Jam and Lime Cordial

    Rob, that’s exactly what I had for breakfast this morning! :)



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