Easter Lessons

...rming post on naturally dyed Easter eggs, I decided to have a go at dyeing eggs on Saturday night. The eggs our ladies deliver are all shades of beige to brown, so I worried that they’d not take dye as well as white eggs, but the post promised good results with brown eggs, and the dyes were deep and earthy enough that it seemed it would not matter. The technique was simple–a one to one ratio of organic matter to water, boiled 15 minutes or more, c...

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An open letter to Trader Joes

...e. And FYI–we also removed the rooster since that would signify that these eggs are fertilized, making us think that your package design folks were snoozing during their high school biology classes. We replaced the picturesque barn with a windowless industrial shed to show the most prevalent housing for poultry and, more than likely, where these cage free eggs came from. The family poultry farm alluded to in your cover art has long since been repl...

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Lead in Backyard Eggs: Don’t Freak Out But Don’t Ignore the Issue

...r other industrial site or a recently burned area you may want to get your eggs tested. Odds are that your backyard eggs are safe to eat but, as the study showed, some of the lead results were well over safe levels. Here’s what UC Cooperative Extension suggests if you have a lead issue, Once potentially contaminated areas are identified, it is your job to prevent your chickens from coming in contact with those areas! You may choose to completely r...

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Solar Oven Triumph: Fluffy Egg Strata

...ven. Eggs, it turns out, really like solar ovens! This is logical, because eggs do well when cooked low and slow. (Have you ever tried the Eggs Francis Picabia recipe in the Alice B. Toklas Cookbook?) I think any kind of quiche/egg pie/strata type recipe will do well in a sun oven, and intend to explore this more. The Eartheasy egg strata recipe was precise for a solar recipe–it said it should cook at 325 F for 60 to 90 minutes. My oven did not ge...

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Chicks, Mayonnaise and Personal Responsibility

..., or living in denial, we can take positive action–such as: 1) Stop buying eggs and products which contain eggs when they come from factory sources. And yes, 99% of eggs you find will be from sketchy factory farms. 2) While you’re at it, do the same for all meat and dairy raised by sketchy producers, which again, is 99% of what you’ll find. Dumpsters full of newly hatched chicks are just the tip of the iceberg in the animal cruelty department. 3)...

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