I grew up colouring eggs every Easter, but what I didn’t know (until last year) is that some eggs come “pre-dyed” in nature. It used to be that you could only find white eggs in grocery stores – brown eggs have now made a huge resurgence and they’re easy to find in stores as well. But what about blue eggs? I didn’t know that chicken’s eggs – yes, the kind we all know and love, can come in shades of blue or green! Inside, they taste exactly the same and are nutritionally equivalent to ‘regular’ brown or white shelled eggs, and can be scrambled, boiled, or frittata’d exactly the same as you would use other eggs.
Last year I started getting eggs from a local farmer instead of from the grocery store. I’ve learned a lot about eggs since then, as my farmer is simply awesome and loves to share information – she’s relatively new into farming, and is doing a very impressive job educating herself and her customers. Did you know that eggs can sometimes break and then fuse back together as the chicken is laying them, creating elongated eggs? Have you ever seen an egg with an extremely bumpy shell? Have you ever seen blue chicken’s eggs?
What I’ve learned since buying direct from the farm is this:
1. The colour of the egg depends on the colour and type of chicken. Brown eggs come from brown chickens, redish-brown eggs come from chickens of the same colour, and blue eggs come from a certain breed of chicken…..no, not blue chickens, but chickens that are expected to lay blue eggs.
2. We consumers have been ‘conditioned’ to receive a carton of 12 exactly identical eggs every time we buy, but in nature, this almost NEVER happens. It seems that the type of egg being layed is up to the “artistic preference” of each chicken! Makes me wonder what is happening with the chickens who are laying the ‘prefab’ identical eggs we all buy in grocery stores.
3. If we truly want to reduce our environmental footprint, sometimes we need to accept imperfections in the items we buy. We all like buying handmade crafts, or original art, because we love the unique ‘one of a kind’ appeal that these handmade items offer. In the same way, if a chicken lays an egg that is a bit larger or smaller than ‘perfect’, that’s because it was made naturally. Every system put in place to get that ‘perfect’ egg consumes more resources.
4. Blue eggs…wow that’s so cool! (our neighbours get eggs from the same farmer, and the kids in their family fight over the blue ones!)
So why all this talk about eggs, and how does it tie into kids and crafts? Well, I love that by getting eggs from the farmer instead of from the grocery store, I’m educating my kids on their food chain. I think it’s cool that they already know more about eggs as kids than I did last year as an adult. Similarly, I like to think that doing crafts with the kids helps them understand everything that goes into the process of making something, and that the results will always be unique, just like those ‘natural’ eggs.
Check out the picture of the blue eggs I got this week. I asked for extra blue ones because Easter is around the corner (usually it’s mostly brown eggs). And if you haven’t stumbled upon blue eggs and you don’t want to colour them with a kit or make your own dyes, here’s a simple way to make sparkly Easter Eggs:
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1. Make flour/water paste by mixing 1.5 parts flour to 1 part water. You may need to add a bit more water, but remember that the more runny the mixture, the more likely it is to ‘melt’ the sugar topping you apply.
2. Colour some sugar with food colouring – we used 1 drop of dye to ~1/4c of sugar. Mix dye around with a spoon. 3. Roll eggs in liquid flour mixture, then roll in coloured sugar. Put eggs into a carton or egg cup to dry. |