How excellent!  X stumped us all.  Once again, a play on words was needed to tackle this egg-cellent letter.  EGGS it is!

Do I have to say anything about eggs?  Yes, I do.  You know I have a lot of issues when it comes to chickens and the same goes with eggs.  I’m on the hunt for a humane, happy and tasty product.  Conventional eggs have so many different labels on them, I can’t keep track and I’m never really sure if those birds are free range or humanely raised or what.

One day it occurred to me, THEY SELL EGGS AT THE FARMER’S MARKET…the only place I feel really comfortable buying chickens from.  Now that I’ve gone down that path, I’ll never go back.  The taste alone blew my palate and my mind!

I was shocked, totally, full on, flat out, caught with my pants down, surprised and amazed when I tasted my first farmer’s market egg.  It was like a whole new food.  Ever been to a really expensive brunch and had an egg that was super tasty, rich and creamy?  That’s what I’m talking about.  You can have that egg every day if you’d get them from the source.

When you get eggs from the Farmer’s Market you might be surprised.  They’re not all the same shape and they’re not all the same color.  My dozens are mixed; a few round and small eggs, a few long and big ones and the colors are all over the place– beautiful with blue, green, brown, speckled and light grey shells.  The camera didn’t pick up the hues in the colors very well, but my eggs on this episode were indeed multi-colored and the yolks were really rich, almost orange in color.  In case you were wondering, the color of the shells has no effect on the flavor, nor are there any changes in the nutrition.  Different breeds of hens lay different colored eggs.

The good outweighs the bad. For a long time people were freaking out about eggs, saying they had too much cholesterol and too much fat to be in a healthy diet.  But what about all that protein and the multitude of vitamins and beta-carotene?  Eggs are good for the eyes, the skin, the brain, the heart; they help you stay positive and happy.

And they’re fun to cook!  Almost every chef I know loves to throw down on some eggs, turning out the perfect omelette, poaching, frying, soufflé-ing…it’s a miracle food.  They are in so many sauces and custards, ice creams and baked goods; even all by themselves they are fantastic.  Traditionally, a restaurant will test out a new chef by asking them to prepare their favorite egg dish.  It’s amazing how one simple ingredient can be used in so many different ways to create so many tasty things.

For me, nothing tastes better than farm fresh eggs whipped up and cooked into a perfect French rolled omelette.  I don’t need anything to flavor the babies, just a little butter and sea salt.  Voila!  It was bigger, bolder flavors that really attracted me to eggs at first, especially since I never really liked eggs that much growing up.  But in 2000 I was in Rajasthan India and ate my first masala omelette.  It really grabbed my attention and thus, I turned it into the frittata for episode X.

Which came first, the chicken or the egg?  I can’t get into this debate.  But I know that nothing tastes better than humanely raised, organic, farm-fresh eggs.  So get down to your farmer’s market and get some of those fun and funky, multi-colored, delicious and excellent eggs!