Do you buy eggs?
Posted: Fri Dec 23, 2022 2:39 pm
Me, not so much. I boil some to put in salads. Always put some in my meatloaf. Rarely makesome concoction that calls for eggs. My daughter has been complaining about the price going up. I found out the bird flu is a bigger problem in the egg industry that it is in the poultry meat industry. This round of bird flu is mostly spread by wild birds. Hard to isolate the egg layers the way it is done for the meat producers.
So I paid attention the last time I was in the grocery store and bought a 1.5 doz package of extra large. It was even 'branded' with a brand nameI recognized from tv commercials. Me, I have always treated fresh eggs as a pure commodity. A grade A large was the same as any other similar grade and size of egg. I even believe the brown or white shell is of no significance as to the way the egg tastes or cooks.
This time I looked carefully. First surprise: Grade A large and Grade A extra large were priced the same. Everything was grade A. I remember my parents explaining this stuff to me and it was not uncommon to see grade B and Grade AA . And size then was small, medium, large, X-large and Jumbo
My mother explained that baking recipes rarely said so, but the eggs called for were medium or large. Real small eggs or the very big ones might throw off the ratio of other ingredients. Very little of that in the egg display I was looking at.. No jumbo or small no grade B or AA.
But the carton was foam, not paper pulp and had all kinds of wonderful marketing/sales stuff printed all over it that made this eggs something very special--always look for this brand. Among other things, these eggs came from chickens that ONLY ATE VEGETARIAN FEED ! Have we come to such a state of industrial farming that the general public does not know that chickens naturally eat bugs and worms found in the dirt they are scratching in?
Does the descriptor of a few lines of hand writing about which I could have said "Looks like a bunch of hen scratching" no longer have any communicative utility? Seems to me to be just one more sign post I have lived too long.
snailgate
So I paid attention the last time I was in the grocery store and bought a 1.5 doz package of extra large. It was even 'branded' with a brand nameI recognized from tv commercials. Me, I have always treated fresh eggs as a pure commodity. A grade A large was the same as any other similar grade and size of egg. I even believe the brown or white shell is of no significance as to the way the egg tastes or cooks.
This time I looked carefully. First surprise: Grade A large and Grade A extra large were priced the same. Everything was grade A. I remember my parents explaining this stuff to me and it was not uncommon to see grade B and Grade AA . And size then was small, medium, large, X-large and Jumbo
My mother explained that baking recipes rarely said so, but the eggs called for were medium or large. Real small eggs or the very big ones might throw off the ratio of other ingredients. Very little of that in the egg display I was looking at.. No jumbo or small no grade B or AA.
But the carton was foam, not paper pulp and had all kinds of wonderful marketing/sales stuff printed all over it that made this eggs something very special--always look for this brand. Among other things, these eggs came from chickens that ONLY ATE VEGETARIAN FEED ! Have we come to such a state of industrial farming that the general public does not know that chickens naturally eat bugs and worms found in the dirt they are scratching in?
Does the descriptor of a few lines of hand writing about which I could have said "Looks like a bunch of hen scratching" no longer have any communicative utility? Seems to me to be just one more sign post I have lived too long.
snailgate