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It is still Fall (and what a lovely Fall it has been). Winter doesn’t actually start for another two weeks. And though it will certainly be much colder, the days will start getting longer!
I never got around to answering MHT when she asked why I had so many eggs in my fridge (so many being around six dozen), so I’ll do so here. Eggs are seasonal. Yes, silly, like tomatoes and apples and celeriac and asparagus and pretty much everything else that we eat, eggs have a time and a place.
You’d never know it, and neither did I, growing up in the Industrial Age of food production. You go to the store and you buy eggs. The store is never out of eggs. There are always enough eggs, whether it be December or June. Same with milk and cheese and flour and beef and cheese. Always enough for those with the money and desire to buy.
But it’s only because they force chickens into cages and then trick them with lights and hormones and other tricks into producing eggs all year long, eggs that have pale yellow yolks (from the annato coloring in their feed, not Vitamin A) and not so much flavor or nutrition (but, hey, they are cheap!).
The eggs I buy are from a small family farm. The chickens live outside for the most part. In the winter, they don’t like to lay eggs, and nobody forces them to. These eggs have yolks that vary from blazing orange (in Summer when there are bugs and green foods a-plenty) to just orange, but never yellow, and never, ever pale yellow.
Long story short, since even the most expensive eggs (and these ones are, at $6 per dozen) are a very inexpensive source of excellent quality protein and other nutritional delights, we rely on them heavily in our diet. And since we are about to lose them until Spring, I’m stocking up.
While the sticker price seems high, eating in season is actually less expensive. Right now, we are eating all the organic apples we want because they only cost 50 cents a pound. Biodynamic organic carrots, local, small, sweet and crunchy? 70 cents a pound. Potatoes and onions, kinda spendy at $1.00 a pound, wouldn’t you say? Greens are free, they come out of the garden.
Go to the grocery store and price a pound of tomatoes, conventional or organic, or grapes from South America, and you’ll see what I’m talking about. Front page of the major national grocery chain near my house’s weekly specials lists ten pounds of conventional apples for ten dollars, or twice what I pay for organic, so I’d hate to see what they charge for something not in season…
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