Operation Omelette Recovery

It comes as no surprise that finding 15 eggs laid in the wilds of our backyard was pretty disheartening to us. Wouldn't you be upset too? I mean, truely, that's 3 quiches or 3 batches of cottage cheese pancakes. Either way you boil it down, it adds up to 3 dinners, and Moose and i just couldn't let 3 dinners go to waste.

So, he helped me do a little research online and we found most of the websites say the same thing. I remember reading something like this a long time ago when we were looking into keeping chickens, and i remember wondering, "Why would i ever need that info, because they are going to be laying in nesting boxes, eh? Silly."

Ha.

"Yokes" on me, eh?

Yesterday evening, i gathered all the eggs in the backyard. They had got so dirty from the ground; silly chickens laid them right in the dirt under some brambles. One had been smashed and another that i had left out in the open had "mysteriously" disappeared overnight. I am hoping a cute little raccoon got a tasty treat!

Once i returned inside with the abandoned eggs, we drew a bowl of cold water. Cookie Monster proceeded to help us test the eggs following this guildlines:

Place each egg, one at a time into the bowl, preceeded by saying, "You have to be careful with eggs." (C.monster's new favourite activity is listening to Bill Cosby's comedy skits from the 70's and 80's.)

The freshest eggs will do this:

rest on the bottom of the bowl.

The eggs bordering on freshness will

tend to tilt up on their pointed end.

The taller they stood on end, the pickier i got about keeping them.

Lastly, the eggs that floated....ooh boy!!

You will want to evict those babies from your kitchen in a timely

and cautious manner 'cause they be R-O-T-T-E-N!!

Out of the 15 eggs, we rescued 10. I'll be using them in baking (thanks for the tip, Annette, from Sustainable Eats.) Of course, the best way to test for freshness is using the tried and true method of actually cracking the egg open and giving it the sniff test. For a more detailed explain of all the hows and whys, i found this site to be quite straight forward.

The eggs that stood on end at the bottom of the bowl, i placed back outside for some other woodland creature to enjoy. Hoping it will keep them away from our corn or tomatoes later! :o)