Using Your Eggs :: The Best Way to Hard Cook Farm Fresh Eggs

The past couple years have been spent experimenting with ways to hard cook farm fresh eggs. Because, honestly, who wants to cook dozens of eggs for egg salad or devilled eggs and have the frustrations with peeling and leave all that egg white on the shell?

As a kid, i remember we'd boil eggs, give them a couple cracks on the counter, and the shell would peel off in one whole piece most of the time.  This was most likely because we were purchasing our eggs from the grocery store, where it can take up to 30 days just to get those eggs from the nest to a carton and in the store.  Not to mention, these eggs typically have a longer shelf life than the eggs from your local farmer because they are pasteurized.  

When an egg is fresh from the nest, it is a very low acid environment, which causes the egg white to adhere to the inner membrane of the shell.  As the egg ages, the acidity increases due to gas exchange through the egg shell, which reduces the powerful hold the egg white has on the inner membrane, making a hard cooked egg easier to peel.  Recommendations are to wait till the egg is 10 days old and use them for hard boiling.

Using this information, i tried boiling eggs that were two weeks old to just a few days away from their freshness date.  No luck.  I still left tons of egg white behind and ended up making way more egg salad, when what we really craved were devilled eggs.   Plus, what is worse than trying to fish an orb as hot as molten lava out of boiling pots of water?  Well, okay, being burned alive in a volcano is much worse than that, but really, cooking should be fun.  Unlike hanging around volcanoes oozing actual molten lava.

Research led me to the idea of oven baking hard cooked eggs, proclaiming that it was the answer to everyone's desires to have their farm fresh eggs and hard cook them too.  I found the results to be split for us.  Sometimes it seemed to work, but more often i experienced the same problem plus two new ones: ugly brown spots on the eggs whites and overcooked egg yolks.

Enter the next theory....steam!

I recently stumbled upon steaming eggs.  And i am happy to report it works like a dream!  I use my rice steamer and get the perfectly cooked eggs that peel like perfection.

Here's the basic idea, adaptable to your type of steamer (pot, bamboo, or appliance):

1. Add enough water so your steamer won't run dry.  In my steamer i fill it to MAX levels.  In a pot, you may only need an inch or so of water.
2. Place eggs inside your steamer, careful not to add too many.  In a steamer basket, 6 eggs at a time is the recommended amount for best results.
3. Set the timer for 15 - 20 minutes and walk away.  This part is really dependent on the number of eggs in your basket.  The fewer eggs, and the smaller the basket i suppose, the less time it will take.  Play with it.  You can always under cook your eggs, and then put them back in for a little more time. :)
4. Once the timer goes off, plunge steamed eggs into a bowl of ice water to cool.  They will still be extremely hot, but you can pick them up with a hot pad or towel.
5. Wait at least 15 minutes before trying to puck an egg from the frozen depths and peel it.  I promise, you won't be disappointed.

Once they are refrigerated, hard cooked eggs will remain fresh for 5 - 7 days.  However, if you make devilled eggs out of them, i can guarantee they won't actually last that long. 

Making changes in our lives and culture

A few years ago, my daytime employer provided something called the Pacific Institute Training for many of its employees.  It was done by a fellow from Seattle, but one of the big selling points to get people to sign up was that every year Pete Carroll would have this training brought to his football players at USC.

One of the philosophies I most remember about it was that your brain gets trained as to what is normal and expected in your life.  When things are out of the normal, your brain starts telling you that something is off kilter and you need to get things back to normal.  If makes you uncomfortable with it.  So, if you want to make changes in your life, you need to start thinking of the changes as a new normal.  You need to have a routine where you set goals and do self-talk as if these goals have already happened.  Your brain will start to believe this is your normal and, if this isn't happening, it will let you know that something needs to change to get to your normal.  You won't feel comfortable any more in your current normal.  You get a push to figure out what you need to do to make the changes you need to.

You then start doing things to get to the normal that you've convinced yourself you should have.  Several people I work with took this to heart and did the work and got the education they needed to get themselves promotions.  I have seen it in our lives where we saw our food wasn't what it used to be and wasn't what it should be.  We started raising chickens and growing veggies in our suburban yard, and we gradually  came to the belief that we belonged somewhere else.  We spent three years looking for where we felt we belonged - where our normal should be.  We're still haven't gotten to the point where we're settled in, and are always talking about adding cows or sheep or pigs, particularly when we're having a tough time finding the quality of food we're looking for without driving all over.

There were other parts of the training, and it must have made an impression on me, because I still remember them clearly years later.  Some of the things I've seen from the Seahawks seems like they come from that type of philosophy, and they have done extremely well in taking people who are convinced they should be successful, even in the face of people telling them they shouldn't be, and doing the work needed to make themselves that way, no matter what everyone else thinks or says about them.

I still hold on to this when I am discouraged, especially when I get out of the grocery store and read the ingredients on some of the "food" items there.  How can we change the momentum of the food industry in the face of the massive corporations that run it with the main interests in profits and convenience, rather than quality?  I feel the tide turning slowly.  One woman I work with just WENT OFF about genetically modified food this last week because of food issues she started dealing with over the last year.  She is convinced they are the cause of it.  Maybe the corporations are turning the tide themselves by producing and selling things that are harmful to more and more people.  We need to continue that change.

Stretching Your Eggs and Your Dollars

The moment we've been waiting for two whole years is here:  we are utterly swimming in eggs!  This is so exciting after the devastation we endured last year.  It's almost like Mother Nature giving us a really awesome Christmas gift. :)

Even though we are swimming in them, strategy is still important to me.  I like to try to save as many as possible for dishes where the eggs are the highlight of the meal instead of buried in it, since organic eggs tend to be more expensive, yet well worth the cost.  I was checking our health food market today, and the same type of eggs we offer here at the farm (cage free, non-GMO, organically raised) sell for $10.19 per dozen!!

Sometimes we just need to bake though, right?  Holiday baking is where it's at, eh?

We are big Christmas bakers in this household.  We could go through a dozen eggs easily during a day of baking.  With eggs scarce this past year, I had to come up with some creative ways to stretch those we did get from our ladies, so we wouldn't need to buy any in addition to what we produced. And that meant breaking up the eggs into yolks and whites and seeing what could be done.  My plan worked so well, I wanted to share it with you.

My family has been keen on thumbprint cookies for what seems like all of forever.  They are Lil' Farmer Mac's favorite cookie.  Come to think of it, they were probably my favourite cookie too as a kid, because my mom and my grandpa always let me help them make a batch or three.  As far as I know, this recipe is my Grandpa's.  He was an ol' farm boy from Ohio.  I remember taking a trip back there with him when I was a little girl.  He showed me how to coax a baby cow into sucking your thumb and how to catch big green grasshoppers and fireflies.  He was one cool dude, and he loved his cookie baking.

The recipe only uses yolks.  Depending on the number of batches you make, you could end up with 1-4 eggs whites.  While scouring my cookbooks, many ideas jumped out at me:  tuile cookies, meringue, macaroons.  Martha Stewart has a fabulous looking recipe for Peppermint Meringues with chocolate filling.  We ended up making French macarons, which you could just about get a cavity from reading all the recipes out there.  (You say you don't have a pastry bag?  No worries, you can use a plastic zip-top bag with one corner snipped to pipe the cookies.)

Macarons left us with more yolks, which were turned into manicotti filling.  Or you could turn them into Swedish meatballs.

Surprisingly, after all this was prepared, we still had 6 eggs left for Eggs in a Window in the morning.

Grandpa's Thumbprint Cookies

Grandpas or Daddies are the best assistants when making these cookies because their thumbs tend to be bigger.  The bigger the thumbprint, the more delicious jam you can pack in!

1 cup butter (Grandpa used Crisco.  I'll let you be the judge.)
3 ounces of cream cheese, softened
1 cup sugar (1/2 cup would even do)
1 egg yolk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
2 - 1/2 cups all purpose flour
jam or fruit spread

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Mix shortening, cream cheese, and sugar until well blended.  Stir in egg yolk and vanilla.  Add flour; mix well.  Roll into about 1 inch balls, place on lined cookie sheet, and make a thumbprint in each cookie.  Fill with approximately 1/2 teaspoon of jam.  Bake 15-17 minutes, or until golden brown around the bottom edges.  Please, please let them cool on the sheet pan.  The jam is searing hot.  These cookies are delectable, but not worth a trip to the Burn Unit.  


And if you've just plain run out of eggs, here's a bonus cookie recipe that doesn't need any eggs. :)

Pepparkakor

Reprinted by popular demand from Seattle’s Child, December 1981.

In our family, the spicy odor of pepparkakor baking in the oven heralds the beginning of the holiday season. Pepparkahor (Scandinavian ginger cookies) not only taste wonderful but are also durable enough to decorate a Christmas tree or to be given as gifts, when shaped like ginger people, hearts, pigs or birds and decorated with white icing swirls and a red ribbon bow. While these are traditional shapes, I remember, there is no limit to the shapes they can take when you make your own cardboard cutout patterns. Trimming the tree with cranberries, popcorn, paper snowflakes and homemade cookies brings us back to an earlier era when life was simpler.

The following recipe was used by my aunt, Stina Hurlen, who is from Dalarna, Sweden and was well-known for her excellent Scandinavian cooking. It will yield enough cookies to trim a small tree and can be doubled successfully. The dough keeps well in the freezer.

Ingredients
½ lb. butter or margarine
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup dark corn syrup  (We use molasses.  Again...you decide.)
½ pint sour cream
1 tsp. allspice
2 T. cinnamon
1 T. ginger
1 T. cloves
1 tsp. baking soda
4-5 cups flour

Combine the butter, sugar and corn syrup in a saucepan. Stir over low heat until the butter is melted and the mixture comes to a slow simmer. Remove from heat and allow to cool. Blend in spices and sour cream.
Add soda and flour, a little at a time, until well-blended.
The dough will be soft. Shape into a roll, wrap well and refrigerate overnight or for as long as a week. Unused portions can be frozen.

To Shape the Cookies
With a floured rolling pin, start rolling portions of the chilled dough on a well-floured board, then transfer to an ungreased cookie sheet and with a floured rolling pin roll the dough directly onto the cookie sheet to 1/8-inch thick.
Cut with cookie cutters or with a sharp knife cut around cardboard patterns you and your children have made. Lift away dough between the cookies.
Bake in a 325 oven for 10-15 minutes or until browned. Cool on the pan before removing.

To Decorate
Typically, these cookies are decorated with a white icing such as Royal Icing or use your favorite decorating icing or buy decorating icing in tubes at the grocery. Press the icing through a decorating tube with a plain tip, making swirls, writing names, and designs on the cookies. Allow the frosting to dry before hanging or storing the gifts.

To Hang the Cookies
Use regular sewing thread and a fine needle. Support the cookie from behind and carefully insert the needle and thread through the cookie at least ½ to ¾ inch from the top center. Leave enough thread to form a loop large enough to fit over tree branches. Or for gift cookies, attach a small red satin or yarn bow to the top center of each cookie. 

–Sonia Cole 



We'll have oodles of eggs for the foreseeable future, so if you are in need of some from the holidays, pay us a visit.  By the by, farm fresh eggs make FANTASTIC stocking stuffers. :)

What are your favourite baked goods for the holidays?

A Thanksgiving Turkey Recipe to Remember

It was only the second time that i was in charge of The Bird.  Making me especially anxious was the fact that i was making the bird for my folks and their guest...is there anything more stressful than a peer performance review at the Thanksgiving table?  For sure the time crunch is a close second.

Coincidentally, my dad and i had happened to stumble upon the directions for a 45 Minute Turkey around the same time.  Mark Bittman's instructions for roasting turkey this way in his How to Cook Everything book was my inspiration, and i concocted the ingredients myself.  So this time of year, with my folk's encouragement, i decided to try something new.

The premise of a 45 minute bird is to flatten ol' Tom Turkey out, so that all the meat roasts on an even plane.  I cut out the backbone out of an eleven pound bird, flatten the breastbones, and tucked the wings under so they wouldn't block the breast meat.  I also learned that tying the legs together would be helpful to.  You could also part out the whole bird, but i wanted to save what i could of the idea of "presentation".

Next i made a compound butter with chopped rosemary, orange zest, and salt and pepper and a brick (two sticks) of butter.  Hold onto this for later. :)

On a roasting pan or cookie sheet, i placed one sliced onion, sliced orange, three chopped carrots and celery sticks (i used the inside part with the leaves and all), and 12 cloves of garlic.  There were whole sprigs of rosemary and leaves of sage that i laid on top of the veg as well.  On top of that, i placed the bird, and rubbed him down with butter, under the skin as well as on top.

Into a 450 degree F oven he went, where he was ignored for 20 minutes.  After that time, turn down the oven to 350 and baste him a little.  I didn't have much juice in the pan, so i used chicken stock to baste him.

Twenty minutes into the process.

After another 15 minutes, i took his temperature.  He was already measuring 155 - 160 degrees F, which is what was recommended as the finishing temperature.  We didn't know if we could trust this, so we put him back in the oven at 325 and stuck him in for another 10 minutes, after basting of course.

We took him out of the oven, tented him with foil, and waited 30 minutes.

And this is how he turned out!!  The meat was so moist and still pink in the middle.  Normally we're sawing through the dried out turkey breasts when i cook it.  And the best thing was he was done in 45 minutes, leaving plenty of time for cooking a couple side dishes and a batch of rolls.   He did pick up a lot of orange flavour, which we found refreshing, but if that isn't your style, you might want to leave out the zest or the slices.

This preparation makes me think we should eat turkey more often!!

How was your Thanksgiving turkey?  Any unusual recipes your family loves?

Merry Christmas!

 

Lil Farmer Mac has been helping work on this video for you.  If nothing else, may we provide you with a bit of cheap entertainment this holiday season.



Thanks to all who supported us this year.  We really appreciate your encouragement, more than you know. 

xo,
The Mactutis Family

Gingerbread Granola

In an effort to reduce the use of boxed cereal in our diet, I make Farmer Mike's granola from a recipe his mom developed when he was young.  It was so kind of her to share that because it is his favourite thing on earth for breakfast.

It dawned on me one day that gingerbread spices thrown in with a homemade granola recipe might just be the perfect marriage of Christmas tradition and breakfast cereal. And best yet, if your low on eggs, as we are around here, there's none required for this recipe.  Which makes it a sure thing for food gift giving that we tend to do this time of year.  To make this even easier, we tend to make up batches of just the dry ingredients and store them away, so it's even quicker to make up a batch of homemade granola.  I suppose the dry ingredients could be packed in a jar, and given like those popular soup or cookie in a jar gifts.

Gingerbread Granola

8 cups old fashioned oats
2 cups whole wheat flour
1 cup oat bran
1/2 cup wheat germ

1 teaspoon allspice
2 Tablespoons cinnamon
1 Tablespoon powdered ginger
1 Tablespoon cloves
(spices are highly subjective--more or less is up to you.)  :)

1 cup oil of any kind
1/2 cup maple syrup
1/4 cup honey
1/4 molasses

1 to 1.25 cups of water

Mix all dry ingredients, then add wet ingredients to the top.  Note with the water, that you'll want to use just enough to make the oats clump together.  Spread on a parchment lined cookie sheet and bake at 225 - 250 degree F for 30 minutes.  Then use a spatula to break up the clumps and turn the granola over.  Bake for another 30 - 60 minutes, until the clumps are rather dry and toasty.  Let cool.

Storing: At this point, you can make your homemade granola more nutritious by adding nuts, seeds, or dried fruit.   Add as little or as much as you'd like.  We tend to store it simply as it comes out of the oven, then we dress it up as we like on an individual basis. 

You can't even imagine how good this tasted for dinner last night with chopped pecans and eggnog, instead of milk.  It was like having dessert for dinner.  :) 

A Lesson Learned

WARNING:  this could be a highly depressing post.  This is the story of the real deal, nitty gritty side of farming.  Especially nitty gritty when it deals with living things.  I will try to lighten the mood a bit with a picture here and there.  However, those extremely sensitive to untimely deaths of sweet cuddly creatures may wish to end their reading here, and come back tomorrow when I post a recipe from some Christmas baking.

There.  You've been warned.  The rest is up to you. :)

 

Salmon Faverolle roo

 

 

 



Some of you have probably been wondering what the deal is here at the farm.  Where's the eggs?  A refrain similar to a beloved Wendy's commercial of my youth.  Well, it's a long story, so long it feels as if it could qualify as an epic story.  As with all respectable epics, this one has its moral of the story as well.

Exasperating doesn't even begin to describe the recent family of chickens we purchased back in July.  If we weren't so committed to well grown food, addicted to "fresh from the nest" eggs, or so blamed stubborn, we might just be giving up the ol' farming dream and moving somewhere where we could walk to decent organic market or bike to a few local farms.

In July, we adopted the largest flock of chicks we've ever had. 50 chicks, give or take, purchased from a small, local breeder.  We were dreaming of chocolate colored egg shells of the Black and White Marans, such a cute breed with their sweet little feathered feet.  We were mesmerized by the beautifully mottled patterns on our Salmon Faverolle roos and hoping they would be friendly enough to keep around to father plenty of babies.  We dreamed of all the fattened roos that would eventually become table decorations.  In actuality, what we've found is that our commitment to keeping our dollars local might not have been the best idea for a main flock of chickens that was intended to keep us in eggs all winter and add a little pizazz to our cartons come spring and summer.

After a couple months, our chickens started succumbing frequently to something that looks like Marek's disease.  It is like a Herpes virus in humans, yet presents like a lymphoma, is very prevalent, and is believed to be incurable.  Our flock seems to be affected by the neural form of the disease, which eventually leaves them paralysed.  Mortality rates in infected birds are usually 100%.

 

White Sussex and Salmon Faverolle hen

It's been hard living with the possibly of total defeat.  It was harder looking out the window to check for the latest victims.

Farmer Mike has been dealt a heavier hand, as I am proving too much of a "girl" to actually assist the bird into it's afterlife.  Sadly, if the birds aren't assisted, they starve to death because they are unable to walk to food or drink.  We don't think that that would be very respectful of the animal.
So, to date, we have 27 chickens left between 20-24 weeks old, including a handful of roos.  Farmer Mike estimates that we have about 17 laying hens so far.

White Maran with her sweet little feathered legs

After all this loss, we've felt like maybe we shouldn't put ourselves out there and try to be part of the food movement by helping produce food.  We may just be too green for that kind of responsibility. Maybe we should just focus on growing food for ourselves and thereby only be accountable to our own hunger pangs.

Then, something happens like yesterday, when a gentleman called up looking for eggs.  Although we don't even have enough eggs for us right now, I was still able to talk with him and help him find alternative farms, owned by friends and neighbours, producing the wholesome eggs he was looking for.  Which reminds of how supportive our farming friends have been and how kind and eager they have been with insights and advice.

White Sussex roo

We know how much better we feel when we eat real food from small farms, and we enjoy helping others discover better health too.

So, what this does this mean for the future? 

From this day forward, any chick that arrives at our door will be vaccinated for Marek's!  Unfortunately, it seems the only way to responsibly and humanely raise chicks on our land, knowing that it could be a death sentence for them if they don't have a little poke. 

Our plans for entering a farmers market may need to be put on hold, depending if we can get a new batch of chickens this January.

Salmon Faverolle hen

And in the short term (for the next month), eggs will definitely be out of stock on our farm.  The elders had been laying one egg a day over the course of weeks, so they have been dispatched to freezer camp.  These past few months without homegrown eggs has been completely maddening! 

Small eggs are just starting to trickle in from the new gals, at a rate of about 1 to 2 per day, so here's hoping the news only gets brighter from here, along with the days getting brighter after the Solstice.