Chicken and egg?

I wonder if we should keep chickens? Our friends in the Netherlands have chickens which has two good things about it: one – lots of eggs, two – they are excellent and attractive waste disposal operatives! Most of what I put in my ‘green’ recycling bin could go straight to the chickens! Another plus is they are endlessly fascinating. The eggs from my friends chickens taste really good, although they do vary in size, but that’s no problem – small eggs? Use two!

So what would be a stumbling block – apart from the fact that my husband doesn’t want chickens – we don’t really have the room. Our friends have a farm and their chickens have a big shed and a very large pen. Their pen has very high wire fences to keep out the foxes as well as keeping the chickens in – we couldn’t really do that in our garden. Some friends in our village have chickens, so maybe they could guide us with how to look after them, because I have no experience at all of poultry raising and care – nor does husband. … and vets bills are expensive as we know with having kept small animals as pets.

So I don’t really think it’s feasible, but we do eat a lot of eggs. As with all things these days a food item will go in and out of fashion will go in and out of whether they are safe to eat, and if they are safe how many should be eaten. I think we are now in the ‘eat as many as you like they are really good for you‘ phase… just as well. Most mornings I have a simple fried egg on half a piece of toast for breakfast – I’m sure if I had just collected that egg from our chickens it would taste even better!

I’ve mentioned several times that my son gave me a Fitbit, and this means I get the Fitbit newsletter which is surprisingly full of interesting articles and has a very good recipe section. Here’s some ideas from Becky Duffett for different ways to use and enjoy eggs – jut in case we do get chickens and have more eggs than we know what to do with! 😉

Meals:

• turkey sausage and egg sandwich
• mini frittata with greens
• vegetable breakfast burritos
• cobb salad with bacon (Becky uses vegetarian bacon – sorry, Becky, I can’t see the point!! I’d miss it out and have a smokey flavour from something else such as a smoked cheese!)
• broccoli fried rice with vegetables and eggs
• cherry tomatoes and green beans
• deconstructed Niçoise
• quinoa bowls with eggs and avocado
• poached eggs in spicy tomato sauce
• mushroom pizza with eggs and herbs
• spring grain bowls with eggs and vegetables
• devilled eggs with Greek yogurt

…and snacks:

• cucumber, tomato, and eggs
• slipped into soup
• nestled in salad.
• popped on a sandwich
• surrounded by vegetables
• tucked in a grain bowl
• scrambled in stir-fries
• cracked on a pizza

alternatively you could just have eggs fried/poached/scrambled/boiled/ /omletted/egg nogged/prairie oystered/ souffléed/ice-creamed/ /custarded… etc!