Adventure!

Becoming a meat eating, paleo/primal/low-carb person has really expanded my diet.  Along with the conventional meat that I'm now eating, like beef, chicken, and bacon, I'm also finding myself getting more and more adventurous.  First I tried ground lamb (I won't be trying that again; too gamey), then beef liver.  A couple of weeks ago, I picked up goat meat at the farmer's market! 

And then, last Friday, I saw something I knew I had to try.  Strolling through the farmer's market, in the same stall that had the goat meat (I went back to pick up more!), I saw....  this.

....Duck eggs?  I mean, I know they're birds.  I know other birds lay eggs.  I know theoretically you can even eat those eggs.  But I've never actually seen anything but chicken eggs.  I knew I had to get them.  But first, I had to ask the guy behind the counter what they tasted like.  In the same beat, both the seller and my mom said "they're richer".  Later on, I found out my mom had kept ducks and chickens when she lived in California as a young wife.  Jealous!

For $2 a half dozen, I figured I had nothing to lose.  So I brought them home.  They look similar to chicken eggs, but.... different, too.  The shells are slightly translucent in spots.  And they're a little bigger than the farm eggs we buy (which I think are jumbo sized).

It got really interesting when I cracked them open.  The membranes under the shells are much thicker, so you really have to pull the shell apart to get the egg out.  And then the white was incredibly thick.  Like....  I don't even know how to describe it.  If I tried, I probably could have gotten the egg white to stretch several feet.  The yolks were quite large, and they were very dark. 

Out of curiosity, I cooked two chicken eggs along side two duck eggs.

Chicken eggs on the left, duck eggs on the right.

It surprised me to see that the duck egg whites are much whiter than chicken egg whites.  Once they were fully cooked, the duck eggs where pure white, whereas the chicken eggs were more ivory.

As for taste?  There honestly wasn't that much different.  The duck eggs were a little more sturdy in texture, and the yolks tasted a little yolkier.  Bot otherwise, they were eggs.  And they were delicious.

The Problem With Farm Eggs

We live in New York.  No, not The City.  We live in New York state, about as far away from New York City as you can possibly get while still being in NY state.  I know from experience that a surprisingly large number of people think that all of NY is like NYC, but I can assure you it's not.  As a matter of fact, the area we live in is very heavy into agriculture.  This area is the largest producer of concord grapes in the world, and our dairy farms produce more revenue than our vineyards if that tells you anything at all.  We have three large Amish communities in our county alone, and there's lots more across the border in PA.  Our dinky city of 30,000 is the largest city in our county.

So it might shock some of you to find out that it took us a while to find a source of farm eggs.  The problem is that we're city folk, and we really had no idea who to contact to find out where to get eggs.  Just because we're surrounded by farms doesn't mean we know anything about them.  But by chance, I saw a carton of eggs in my mom's fridge with a little tag attached with the name of the farm she bought them from, and I was all like OMG TELL ME WHERE YOU GOT THESE!!!  Lol, down the street from where she lived.  Somehow, in all the times we'd been to my mom's house, Chad and I had never seen the sign that read "FRESH EGGS $2.50 A DOZEN". 

We immediately went out and got two dozen.

I love that green-egg-laying chicken.  Now I just need some green ham.

They're so so so so so good.  I'll admit that when we first started buying them, they weren't really that different from the eggs we buy at the store.  I've decided that it's because it was the dead of winter then, and of course chickens can't really forage in two feet of snow.  But now that there are bugs and grass and other delicious things for the chickens to eat, their eggs are so awesome. 

The egg in the middle is a store bought egg, which, by the way, is from a brand we really like because their egg yolks are a lot darker than other brands we've tried.  So that should tell you how seriously dark the yolks of the farm fresh eggs are.

I even got to meet the guy selling the eggs the other day.  He was amazingly friendly, and seemed so chipper and happy.  I bet he eats lots of eggs himself.

But there's a problem with farm fresh eggs.  Yes, a real problem that can't be ignored.  The problem is.... availability.  Because farm chickens aren't machines.  Because there's a limited supply.  And because demand is going way up as people become more aware of how the happiness of their food affects their own well being.  We went about two months without farm eggs because, every time we went out to buy them, there weren't any there.  After a while, we just stopped bothering to check, because it is a little out of the way now that my mom has moved to a different house. 

My mom and I recently went out to the farm at an off hour, and to my delight, they had eggs!  Chad and I checked again last weekend, and managed, after checking at two different times, to get the eggs we so desired.  I really don't want to bother the farmer with our problem because it's a first-come-first-serve kind of deal, and we shouldn't get any special treatment, but I do wish our supply was more consistent. 

I guess I just have to wait until we move to the country and get our own chickens.  I have to find out what kind of chickens lay green eggs...