If you’ve been to the grocery store lately you know what our egg situation is like. Avian flu has struck the major egg producers and a whole lot of chickens have been culled. That’s the problem with industrial scale farming -when thing go wrong they go wrong on a large scale.
In my local stores the egg section is pretty empty. We also have the weird situation where organic and free range eggs can actually be cheaper than regular eggs. That’s because the specialty eggs are smaller operations and less prone to the disease.
Of course you could always raise your own chickens. That’s great if you are into that sort of thing. As much as I love eating eggs raising chickens really doesn’t fit my lifestyle. My lovely wife and I like to travel too much. We don’t have anyone who’d be willing to take over when we are gone.
What we’ve been doing is buying a lot of local eggs. They were never cheap, but now their prices aren’t any worse than the poorer quality eggs. Even with today’s high prices, eggs are a fairly cheap source of protein. I’m not going to drop them out of my diet if I don’t have to.
Eggs are not one of those things I want to stock up on. I’ve tried different powered and freeze dried eggs. They aren’t that good. I’ve found the powered eggs are suitable as a cooking ingredient but not very good for things like omelets. The freeze dried eggs taste bad and the mouth feel is like eating sponges. I don’t recommend it.
Worse come to worse I’d rather do without eggs than eat bad ones.
-Sixbears
have you tried ova-easy eggs? great if you like scrambled. i have seven hens and a roo, saw this coming. now i have eggs running out of my ears. giving them away for now. they are delicious. some folks seem to be leery of them b/c they aren't from the store. mine are organic, non-gmo, non-soy. wth? anyway, my neighbor has chicks too, he says the guys at the factory will fight over them. they cost me about twenty bucks a month in feed. initial investment will never be recovered but peace of mind has value all it's own. thinking pigs next.
ReplyDeleteI haven't tried ova-easy, and now I'm interested. I'll have to order some and test them out. Thanks.
DeleteEggs, powdered, freeze dried, liquid, sort of egg product, and even precooked egg things that look sort of like yellow tortillas, I've tried them all having worked in that dept. for 7 years straight. I've become a variable expert in eggs. Here's my advise, raise your own or spend the extra money for "real" eggs. Anything else is crap, and don't let the camp cook convince you of anything different. 80)
ReplyDeleteThat has been my experience but hope springs eternal.
DeleteOr as I've done, become a partner to a chicken enthusiast and support her with feed in trade for eggs. I also assist in predator issues as she's anti-gun and repairs-rebuilding the coop to be more predator resistant.
ReplyDeleteI have several bags of chick feed and layer feed in a rodent proof area awaiting her needs right now. I also know the 1800's scientific farmer pre-Purina chicken raising recipes for field peas-beans plus cracked corn and seeds for that effort in metal cans.