Even if I only use free-range organic eggs in my cooking and baking I'm just not very comfortable with the egg-thing anymore. Even if I have never been a big egg eater (previously mentioned in a i-confess- food-post some years ago...) I have more and more began shying away from using and eating them at all. Since the way chickens and hens are treated in large-scale production - which I obviously hate wholeheartedly, yes, one of the reasons for not liking IKEA, not their treatment of chickens but the large-scale thing... - makes me sick. And that nauseating feeling rubs of on any kind of eggs for me.
But. If more people kept a small amount happy free-ranging chickens of their own, that were allowed to live chicken-happy-satisfying lives I see no reason for not taking care of, making food use of the eggs those family members lay. There's never any killing and eating of chickens on the human agenda. The chooks are simply family members living a good life for as long as they are healthy and perky, when they pass away it's due to illness or old age, not to become food.
If that was the case with eggs, I'd be very less reluctant to eat them.
So. These pretty eggs are of the most free-ranged of free-range eggs kind. M bought them from a colleague of his who apparently have a few chooks in her living-in-a-rural-Stockholm-suburb-home. They roam the yard and garden freely and get decent, appropriate chicken-food. On a good day they lay nine eggs. That certainly is my kind of sweet smale scale egg production.
Kismet and Jojo wholeheartedly promote an kind, caring "egg day" (ägg = egg, dag = day), where all the eggs should come from happy, free-ranging chooks. Chooks not bred to be used and abused for the assumptive human greed purpose only, but as a part of something much better, a life, a world where we all play a part in a respectful life-and-food-cycle.
So far I've baked a sponge cake with two of the pretty eggs. They looked quite different in the bowl and the cake rose more than the average cake, turned out very nice. See, that's what happy eggs make.
6 comments:
I would love to have a couple of chickens but it is against the law to have them in the city of Toronto - you would have to keep them secretly!
I have been having the same considerations about eggs lately. I would love to have chickens of my own...however, neighborhood does not allow it :(
I agree - the eggs we eat are all bought at the gates of homes in our area. They run honesty box systems. You can see the fluffy chickens in the field at the place that we normally buy from. Now that's being in touch with the food we eat.
I would have difficulty keeping chickens for a number of reasons, but try to buy eggs from small holdings where they roam freely.
Eggs is really my favorite. I loved when it is sunny side up and boiled egg. And also it provides complete protein. They have all of the essential amino acids. The egg white contains slightly more than half of the protein of the egg.
Eggs also supply iron, Vitamin A, methionine, lecithin and B12.
My husband and I, both long time vegetarians, have recently gone Vegan for the reasons you speak of - horrible factory farms! We are now egg and dairy free. I will miss cheese and using eggs in certain baking but so far it is ok - there are SO many great vegan cookbooks out there now! I can not bear the idea of animals being abused and killed. They feel all the emotions we have - happiness, joy, fear, anger, and pain. Somehow we have lost a sense of balance in the world.
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