Good Luck at Two Crones Farm Today!

For the first time since our hens began laying I actually cooked up some of the eggs.  I fried up the egg in real browned butter and served it on crispy whole wheat toast with a freshly sliced heirloom tomato on the side.  Nothing quite like a backyard breakfast to start a day in the garden! 

The surprise in today's breakfast was that one of the eggs was a double yolk!  Come to find out, there is a .01% chance of having a double yolk in a normal dozen store bought eggs.  Being a novice hen host I was quite surprised to find this egg in the pan.  Double-yolked eggs are reasonably common for ducks and chickens, despite the fact that we so rarely see them in stores. It is estimated that 1 in 1,000 eggs (out of 50 billion produced annually in the US) have double yolks. Eggs increase in size as the number of yolks increases, but most of them are caught by "candling," or holding the egg up to a light source to reveal a shadow of what is inside the shell, and used for other egg products instead of being mixed in with single-yolks. Stores that do offer the eggs usually have one local source for them. The chickens, ducks and other birds that lay them have a genetic tendency to produce the eggs, so if a farm is stocked with such birds, most of their eggs with have double yolks. The eggs are popular with anyone who likes yolks and are also believed to be good luck by many.

Far less common are multiple yolk eggs, including triples and quadruples, like the one pictured here. Apparently, the greatest number of yolks found in one egg was nine! Can you just imagine the size of that egg? 

For those of you concerned about cholesterol and eggs there is plenty of scientific and nutritional information showing that the risk has been overstated.
Eggs have long been the voice of evil because they contain cholesterol, so much fear that most people refrain from eating one of the most perfect of foods that nature provides. The truth is that the egg is rich in cholesterol, but the latest findings tell us that cholesterol in food does not affect blood cholesterol levels or cholesterol in the blood affects the development of cardiovascular disease. Myths about the harmful effects of saturated fat and cholesterol from foods of animal origin are slowly but surely destroying. Modern science provides ample evidence that saturated animal fat, or cholesterol, have nothing to do with the typical diseases of modern man, and it is known that from time immemorial have constituted an important part of human nutrition. Today they are already available scientific evidence about what actually causes cardiovascular and other chronic diseases. Cardiovascular disease (blockage of vessels, heart and cerebral infarction) are caused by chronic inflammation in the arteries, which arise from excessive consumption of refined carbohydrates (sugar and flour) and excessive intake of vegetable oils rich in omega-6 fatty acids. Why a paradigm shift going so slow and why these new findings are not generally known and recognized, are the questions to which the answer is not short, so we leave that topic for another time.

Enjoy a meal that includes whole, farm fresh eggs....It does your body much more good than harm.
Bon Appetit!