Scored!

My sainted tomato lady (Suzy Parker) decided to try raising chickens as an experiment. Free range, of course, organic feed, the whole bitI got there this morning to get my usual weekly tomato allotment and she asked if I wanted any eggs. "Sure!" She walked into the pen, rustled around for a bit, and came out with a dozen, still warm, with mucous and straw. Oh my.

I got them home and fried one. It's the first time I've seen eggs with yolks that are almost orange here in the US, and the flavor took me back to the finest farm eggs I had in Italy.

$2 a dozen.

Fritatta today!

The frittata we shared a few weeks back was made with eggs laid right around the corner - still warm from the chicken's ass.*


*as a city boy, I am not quite sure exactly which orifice the eggs actually come out of, but it sounded good.

My sainted tomato lady (Suzy Parker) decided to try raising chickens as an experiment. Free range, of course, organic feed, the whole bitI got there this morning to get my usual weekly tomato allotment and she asked if I wanted any eggs. "Sure!" She walked into the pen, rustled around for a bit, and came out with a dozen, still warm, with mucous and straw. Oh my.

I got them home and fried one. It's the first time I've seen eggs with yolks that are almost orange here in the US, and the flavor took me back to the finest farm eggs I had in Italy.

$2 a dozen.

Fritatta today!

Hey Stuart,
The eggs I get at the Farmer's Market have yolks that very from deep gold to almost orange. Some of the shells are so hard to crack. I love talking to the different grower's about what they feed their chickens. Some have very elaborate diets and they love to talk about it. Ask your lady what she feeds her chicks. $2.00 a dozen is a real bargin .... you scored good!

The frittata we shared a few weeks back was made with eggs laid right around the corner - still warm from the chicken's ass.*


*as a city boy, I am not quite sure exactly which orifice the eggs actually come out of, but it sounded good.

Chickens do not urinate, the white spot on the chicken feces is uric acid that comes out with the droppings. The Vent is located just under the tail. ... this vent is connected to the reproductive system. So you were right.

*as a city boy, I am not quite sure exactly which orifice the eggs actually come out of, but it sounded good.

There's only one, called a cloaca. Birds reduce body weight by excreting virtually no water and excreting their nitrogen as uric acid, which removes nitrogen with no water loss, as opposed to ammonia or urea, the other two waste forms of nitrogen. That's why guano (the stuff that comes out of a cloaca) is prized as fertilizer: it's nature's version of ammonium nitrate (and less prone to explosions!)

Mark Lipton

John, that may explain (besides the skill of the chef!) why that fritatta was so good.

Karen, I'll ask when I see her next weekend. I think they eat corn and the fruits/veggies that aren't quite good enough for sale. She and her crew do a constant triage, pulling anything off the shelf that doesn't seem like it's perfect. I love love love that sort of fanaticism.

My sainted tomato lady (Suzy Parker) decided to try raising chickens as an experiment. Free range, of course, organic feed, the whole bitI got there this morning to get my usual weekly tomato allotment and she asked if I wanted any eggs. "Sure!" She walked into the pen, rustled around for a bit, and came out with a dozen, still warm, with mucous and straw. Oh my.

I got them home and fried one. It's the first time I've seen eggs with yolks that are almost orange here in the US, and the flavor took me back to the finest farm eggs I had in Italy.

$2 a dozen.

Fritatta today!

Good for you. I've got a neighbor down the road who has been supplying me for three years with the orange-ist eggs I have ever seen. The shells are also much thicker than the store bought.

Thomas, it's a particularly fortunate thing, because in my regular get-togethers with cooking buddies, our menus are almost exclusively ingredient-driven rather than being cooking show-offs. We did a simple spinach, potato, and onion fritatta last night for the secondi, and it was just pure heaven. Though the concasse of heirloom tomatoes (grown 100 yards from the henhouse) probably didn't hurt...

I raised chickens for years and was always struck by the deep color of the yolks. I had Rhode Island Reds and Barred Plymouth Rocks. I fed them restaurant "scraps." By that I mean lettuce trimmings,tomato ends, etc. - mostly vegetables. They were very prolific and laid an egg a day during the season.

Finally have access to them again here. A friend is raising chickens and shares.

The tomato situation on the other hand is terrible.The only things in my garden that have ripened are the Sun Golds and a few Green Zebras. My big - ostensibly - "red" tomatoes are huge, most well over a pound, and bright green on September 1.

[Robin Garr]

It's the first time I've seen eggs with yolks that are almost orange here in the US, and the flavor took me back to the finest farm eggs I had in Italy.

What Karen and others said: Without taking a think away from your enjoyment of those wonderful fresh-laid eggs, true free-range eggs normally have that bright, deep orange yolk. It's not unusual, and - this may give a vegetarian pause - my farm-girl bride says it's because freely roaming chickens eat lots of bugs. Put THAT in your frittata and eat it ...

Thomas, it's a particularly fortunate thing, because in my regular get-togethers with cooking buddies, our menus are almost exclusively ingredient-driven rather than being cooking show-offs. We did a simple spinach, potato, and onion fritatta last night for the secondi, and it was just pure heaven. Though the concasse of heirloom tomatoes (grown 100 yards from the henhouse) probably didn't hurt...

Yep, that's what it's all about.

Right now, I am literally rolling in tomatoes--we have 45 plants providing six separate varieties.

Fresh brandywine tomato and purple and green okra omelet is among my top choices of harvest heaven.

Wow...You have to bring eggs on Friday, too...

But of course (assuming the hens are cooperative Friday morning)!

Gail just reminded me that her boss has hens and we can get eggs from him. I told her to get some this week.

Somewhere I have a recipe for a thing called, if I remember correctly, a gold-and-silver thread cake. The idea is, you mix one lot of cake batter with just the yolks and another lot with just the whites, then swirl them together in the baking tin like a rainbow cake. When your eggs have really yellow yolks, this should work ok. When your eggs are the pusillanimous, anaemic battery-hen variety, you may as well not bother.

Matilda

I have to chime in here. For about 20 years we kept a small flock of chickens (usually 3 -6 hens) here in our suburban yard (1/2 acre), and they grazed daily on the lawn and ate every bug, snail and slug they could find. It took me a while to figure out which flowers and bedding plants they didn't want to tear up looking for bugs, but eventually I did, and they were not only picturesque and useful, they were quite sociable and would interact with our children and the pet dogs. The biggest benefit, of course, was the daily appearance of a half-dozen or more lovely, orange-yolked eggs. Those eggs were not like any store-bought eggs as you've pointed out. The downside was that I had to wash down the patios and walkways every day, but it was a fair trade for what we got. Every night the flock went back to the coop to be locked up for the night (lots of predatory wild animals in this area). Our last chicken died last year at age 12.