Eggs

I ate eggs this weekend – yes, real eggs.  Six of them, three on Saturday and three on Sunday.  And they were really good.  I hadn’t eaten eggs in over a year and a half, and when I was eating eggs, they were the egg whites out of a carton.

But recently I met a fellow runner who has six chickens in her backyard.  She takes care of them and has built a great coop, and they run around and play and follow her around when she is outside.  She keeps them warm and feeds them whatever it is that real chickens eat.  They also lay eggs.  She says each of them lays about 3 to 4 times a week, and they are not the huge eggs that we are used to seeing in the grocery store, because these chickens were not bred to lay huge eggs, and they were not bred to lay more than 3 to 4 eggs per week.

She says that when they are outside playing and they need to lay an egg, they run over to their nest, lay the egg, and then run back outside and play some more.

Sounds idyllic, doesn’t it?  It is never as rosy as it seems I suppose, but she says that her breeder is very careful to maintain the breed and not supersize it in any way.  I am concerned about what happens to the male chicks and she says the extra males are raised by local farms, but I don’t necessarily believe that.  Who could use that many roosters?

So I’m sure the vegan police will be breathing down my neck now, but as I told my new chicken lady friend, I try to do the best I can.  No one is a perfect vegan, no matter what they tell you.  Six eggs in a year and a half is not going to destroy my health, and as for the animals, well, I asked a lot of questions and I am satisfied with most of the answers (except the male chick issue).  I am not going to make this a habit, but it was a one time offer that she made and I graciously accepted the eggs and I loved them.

They are very beautiful eggs, and on Saturday I just scrambled them, on Sunday I did them fried.

Quite delicious, and I don’t feel guilty.