What is your take on eggs? Are you lucky enough to have your own chickens and collect eggs?
I rely on my kids for home raised free range eggs. They have the cutest collection of chickens. Little fluff balls of feathers and they lay eggs! Actually they have a variety of chickens. I don’t know much about the breeds of chickens. It is interesting the variety of eggs they lay! Everything from green, blue, white, and various shades of brown eggs. It’s like an Easter basket surprise when they bring me a batch of eggs!
Awhile back, I had the opportunity to purchase pasture raised eggs on a very good sale. They were about a penny more per egg than the regular stock white eggs. So I bought Happy Eggs. The egg yolks are very yellow.
So here’s a question, do you buy regular white eggs because they are less expensive? Or do you spend a few pennies more per egg, and buy free range (also known as pasture raised eggs)?
Free range Happy Eggs
Oh my goodness! Look at the color of those Happy egg yolks! My SS (stroke survivor) husband cannot understand why the yolks are so yellow, so he has refused to eat them. Until this morning. He asked if the eggs were our kids eggs, and I said they are free range eggs! So good, aren’t they!? He ate them and really liked them. It has been awhile since he ate a regular white egg from the grocery store, so I think he’s use to the brighter yellow yolks. But seriously, these Happy Egg Co egg yolks are really yellow, even compared to our kids homegrown free range eggs. I wonder if they have more nutrients or if the chickens eat something special to enhance the color of the yolks. I’m really curious about why they are so bright compared to our families homegrown eggs.
Homegrown Free Range Eggs
Farm Fresh Eggs – Unwashed until right before cooking.
Homegrown eggs, as are the eggs in the main photo of this post. I know, they look pretty gross before they are cleaned. The clean up pretty and cook beautifully though! And they taste really good. I fried these eggs up in some peppered bacon grease… all the black specks in the frying pan are black pepper. It was very peppery bacon and it adds so much good flavor to the eggs! I didn’t take a photo of the cooked eggs. But you get the idea… the yolks are a beautiful yellow. My SS loves these eggs!
Don’t you love all the beautiful colors!
The Chickens Inside to Roost for the Night
Oh my goodness! Look at those little fluff balls of feathers. They are so cute! This is the chicken house, where the chickens are all put inside every night. They cannot stay outside because of the dangers of all the wildlife. They all have little hen boxes on a side wall. The roosters are no longer with us, and about a dozen more hens were added to the flock this past spring. Maybe one day I’ll take some photos of the chickens out in the field. For now, this pic from last year is the only photo I have.
So now, what about those store bought caged chicken eggs…
These are the standard white eggs from Walmart or any other grocery store. Caged eggs are cheap, but they lack some of the nutrition found in homegrown, or pasture raised eggs. One thing we can count on with these eggs, is the standard size! When a recipe calls for 3 eggs and I’m using homegrown eggs, I sometimes add an extra egg, because the eggs were on the smaller side. Oh the joys of baking!
Did you notice the color of the yolk isn’t nearly as bright as the Happy Eggs Co eggs or our homegrown eggs. But look… I got a double yolk! How fun is that! It’s the first time I’ve seen a double yolk in years. And the funny thing was, in this carton of eggs, several of the eggs had double yolks. What are the chances of that happening!
As I asked in the beginning of the post, what type of eggs do you use? Homegrown? Cage free or pasture raised? Or the everyday inexpensive white eggs?