We have kept chickens for going on 15 years now. They amuse and entertain us. Even better, they give us some of the most perfect food imaginable. What better to gently fry up and slip over leftover pasta or Matter Paneer or pizza? Eggs are the perfect solution to getting home late from work and needing something quick and delicious. And breakfast without eggs?? Forget about it. A quiche, a scramble, frittata, or flan.Eggs are the foundation for many of my favorite eats. If you have eggs, some butter or oil, a little salt, maybe some pepper - you have a meal. If you also happen to have some goat cheese, maybe some spinach, some cooked potatoes, some roasted peppers - you have a feast. With some sugar and cream, creme brulee can be your next dessert. There really is nothing in my cooking repetoire that can't be mixed into or go under an egg. Egg - I sing your praises!
We collect the eggs each evening when we shut down the barn. In the summer there are usually between two and six to bring in. I can carry four eggs in the palm of my hand and if I balance one more, I can usually manage the evening's take and still have one hand free to slide the barn door closed. The dogs, ever vigilant, are always nearby to deal with disaster clean up should I ever drop one. In the event that I'm feeling particularly clumsy or the egg count should exceed the one hand limit, there's always a shirt front into which I can tuck the delicate globes for the trip to the fridge.
Even beyond eating them, the finding the of eggs is most pleasing to me. After all these years, it never fails to bring on a childish sense of delight when I look into the corner of the hay room and see a stash of lovely, pearly eggs. Our different breeds of chickens lay either tan, brown, blue or green-shelled eggs. Its an Easter egg fantasy carried all the way into mid-life. If they have just been laid, they are warm - a special pleasure to cradle on a cold evening. They look like poetry rolled together into the low spot of a nest. When I see them, I am not thinking food or ingredients. I am thinking perfection of structure, color, and design. Somewhere, buried deep in my genetic code, I'm probably also aware of the essence of continuity that is represented in the sight.
And nests. I collect them out of trees in the fall when they're no longer needed for raising the babies. I buy them made out of pine needles and put them on a shelf to hold stones and beach glass. My friend, Lauren, recently gifted me with the one in the picture below which she crocheted out of strips of quilt fabric. It holds an intact robin's egg that I found fallen to the moss below a fir tree in the back yard and some finch eggs from another friend's caged pets. I am pretty sure I love nests because they represent what I most desire from my own home life: comfort, warmth and a low spot that I can roll into and where I can come to rest.
