24 March 2008

Meg & Kelly's Eggcellent Adventure

Since we were visiting people this past weekend and everyone had eggs all over the place for Easter, we decided to loot some refrigerators and do an experiment. Or, should I say, an eggsperiment.

I conducted the eggsperiment using the steps of the highly scientific Scientific Method, as listed by Wikipedia.


Define the question:How much more kickass are our chickens' eggs than gross white store eggs or organic, free-range store eggs?

Gather information and resources (observe):
Resources: My mom stole the white egg, and we stole the organic, free-range egg from my mom. The huge egg came from our birds, obviously. Information gathered: Our chickens lay huge eggs.

Form hypothesis:
Our chicken's egg is gonna taste sooo gooood. Conversely, that white egg is gonna taste like crap.

Perform experiment and collect data:

L to R: store bought free-range organic egg, white egg, two of our chickens' eggs

Analyze data:

The free-range organic egg was alright. It looked basically like our eggs do, except that the yolk was pretty runny. It broke when I flipped it. The white egg was very watery and stringy. The yolk was runny, and the white part was so thin and watery that it started to smoke and get crispy as soon as I put it in the pan. It also smelled like hell. Seriously. If our chickens were to lay something that reeked like that when it was cracked open, we would have eaten the chickens by now. Ugh. Our chickens' eggs were big and bright and fluffy, as usual. They smelled fresh and nice. I didn't eat the white egg. I scrambled it up and put it on the porch for the outside cat. He didn't eat it either.

Interpret data and draw conclusions that serve as a starting point for new hypothesis:

Conclusion: Our eggs taste awesome. New hypothesis: No one should buy those crappy white eggs. Everyone should have a chicken.

Publish results:

Does this blog count?

Retest (frequently done by other scientists):

Kelly cooked himself two eggs for lunch. He said they were delicious. Original results confirmed.

18 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sounds scientific to me! Except for the non-blind experimenters, that is. :) I would gladly undertake to see if your results are reproducible; unfortunately I don't have the resources and my grant money is at an all-time low. Does this comment count as a peer review?

(We have a lab notebook for our kitchen, incidentally. Our hypotheses are things like "this bread will be softer if I add 11 g oil" and "peppermint patties made ourselves with an extra-thick layer of chocolate will be much better than the store-bought ones.")

Anonymous said...

Even free-range farmers' market eggs don't hold a candle to our huge, super-flavorful, apricot-yolked homegrown eggs. People (including us) actually cried when our six girls shut down for the winter. Thanks for this hysterical post--a much-needed laugh on a Tuesday morning! Maybe it will encourage a few folks to try raising their own.

Anonymous said...

LOL!!! Great post, and I soooo know what you mean!! :)

Danni said...

You guys crack me up - where do you come up with these ideas? But your scientific methods and analytical deduction prowess leave me awed and humbled. Good job!
I'm so looking forward to my girls starting to lay!

Gypsy said...

LOL!! Word to the wise if the cats or dogs won't eat it neither should you!

We are just starting to get eggs again from my sisters girls.It is a wonderful sign of spring.

Carla said...

LOL! I had to buy eggs for the first time in 2.5 years over the winter. My 3yr old hens took the winter off. The thing I noticed right away was the color of the yolk--so pale. Our egg yolks are nearly the color of marigolds.
I also noticed that we subconsciously didn't eat the eggs unless they were in something (pancakes, cake, cookies, etc.). No one ever said, "Yuk, we won't eat store bought eggs.", but scrambled eggs just never appeared on anyone's plate all winter.

Anonymous said...

OK, you can just stop now. This post was pure torture. Where I live, I'm forbidden by law to raise even a single chicken outside. I grew up raising chickens for eggs, and Jeremy eats eggs as if he were going to die tomorrow. Storebought eggs do smell bad, raw and cooked. They taste like a waste of time too. Pale, smelly, bland, yucky eggs.

This is partly why I cook so much stuff egg-free. I just can't stand gross eggs.

I also miss raising my own eggs.

This is me, being jealous of you from now until forever. Or at least until I can have chickens again.

sugarcreekstuff said...

That was a pants wetter. My sister won't eat my hens eggs because of the once in awhile red speck grosses her out and she won't eat my Dad's hens eggs due to the "Rooster Splooge" in them. (whatever) So she actually buys those crap store eggs. Then in the same breath she say's no one in her family eat's eggs but her. Gee,I wonder why?

Anonymous said...

I'd like to state for the record, your honor, that I didn't steal the egg. I left a modest donation in a basket. I couldn't have people thinking I stuffed eggs down my shirt in a grocery store :)Sounds like an I Love Lucy episode.
Meg's mom.

Christina said...

I'm jealous. Simply downright jealous.

Christy said...

Good study! I don't know how anyone eats those white things they sell at the store.

Anonymous said...

For the first time since Feb. I bought store eggs. Our ladies don't lay white and we needed some for "Easter Eggs". The shells were very very thin, out of 24 were were left with 16 after boiling, and I boiled 6 at a time. Thankfully we have 4 daughters who were all set with coloring 4 eggs each. The eggs didn't last long though, they were gone before Easter Dinner.

Laughing Orca Ranch said...

Thanks for the awesome egg research, data collection and results. They were surely eye-opening, even though, those with backyard chickens knew this information already. But seeing it set up the way you did it( even if tongue-in-cheek) was very cool.

The cooking picture said volumes, though. That white egg is just ugly. Your eggs look like fluffy pillows of goodness!
Set me up a plate!

One of my sons always refused to eat store-bought factory farmed eggs. He said they tasted awful, but I didn't really understand, until we started eating our own fresh eggs from our hens.

I was shocked at the amazingly rich, creamy flavor, and now my son begs for me to cook him some of our hens' eggs almost every day.

Thanks for the very cool and hilarious blog post.

LauraP said...

I was going to say something pithy and appropriate, but my stomach started growling and I just had to go cook a couple of sunny-side ups donated a couple hours ago by the girls in the henhouse.

Yeah, you are so right about store eggs. Ick.

Farmer Jen said...

You two totally cracked me up! Meg's Mom is funny as well with her I Love Lucy reference. I really needed those laughs.

I also loved your bolting spinach post. Too funny. I can relate.

I found my way to your blog from reading Farmgirl DK's Critter Farm blog. I will be back to read more.

Robbyn said...

LOL, now THAT's my kind of science!

Meg said...

We're glad you all liked our science experiment. Maybe we'll make this a regular feature :D

Jenny, I love that you guys have a lab notebook for your kitchen. Yeah, that research money is always the kicker, huh? :P That's why we stole/foraged all of our supplies.

Ether, that stinks that you can't have chickens. Damn city ordinances.

Sugarcreek, lol at your sister's egg-phobia.

Laura P, I cooked the store eggs first and kind of lost my appetite. Luckily, by the time our gals' eggs were cooking, I got hungry again!

Farmer Jen, hi! I've seen you around the garden blog world--we're glad you liked the post, and thanks for stopping in!

Anonymous said...

This was hilarious. Thank you.

In fact, I was just wondering the other day, why do I want to have chickens so much when I don't even eat much eggs at the moment? Well, maybe the reason I don't eat eggs right now is that there's no edible eggs available...