The chicken that lays the egg. . .

Since it seems that a lot of my recent recipes involve eggs I thought it a great time to discuss eggs in particular.  You have probably heard that pasture raised eggs are more nutritious for you and that is true.  Eggs have gotten a bad rap and that can be blamed on the industrial egg laying process.  Industrial eggs are produced by feeding chickens all that horrible stuff I've discussed before - anti-biotic feed, animal waste, ground up dead animals, corn, etc.  This process produces an egg that is watery, colorless with bad cholesterol.  Pasture raised eggs have "1/3 less cholesterol, 1/4 less saturated fat, 2/3 more Vitamin A, 2 times more Omega-3, 3 times more Vitamin E, 7 times more beta carotene and 4 to 6 times more the Vitamin D."  If that's not reason enough to purchase the slightly more expensive pastured eggs I don't know what is.
  James and I spent several days last week helping our friend build his own chicken coop which will house 24 free-range chickens that lay eggs for his own use and extras to sell to the local bakery (as well as having fresh chicken meat when the layers don't produce as much anymore, about 2 years).  Our friend has been working towards becoming more self-sustainable on his 11 acre lot in Amador county.  He lives in a very rural area and isn't capable of becoming a member of a CSA nor does he like the idea of paying the higher prices for local well-raised food.  It is an added bonus that he will be eating better and getting exercise through raising and tending his own food production.  It is not only the people who live in the city and have access to more amenities that can eat better.  Growing your own food takes less work than most people think.
  With enough room, chickens can forage for up to 70% of their own food - grubs, bugs, plants and worms.  If chickens are raised with other live stock its an even better deal because the chickens act as the clean-up crew after the other animals have come through and left their droppings behind.  Chickens spread the manure, eat the larvae (gaining protein in their diet) and help fertilize the plants.  The only work needed by a person raising chickens is to make sure they have the added feed they need once a day, a supply of water and to harvest the eggs for a few minutes every day.  Raising chickens has become overwhelmingly popular in the last couple years.
  James and I have done our own research into egg nutrition and have been ordering our dozen pasture raised eggs from our CSA in Dixon.  I was amazed with the bright orange colors of the pastured eggs and how much stiffer and less runny they were than the store-bought eggs.  It was my impression that we were probably buying the best and most nutritional eggs we could through our CSA but just a few weeks ago I was proved wrong.  My brother-in-law has started staying with us a few days a week for his work and brings us a dozen eggs from a farm near his house.  This farm is not out to make money they just sell what extra eggs they have that they don't consume themselves.  As soon as I cracked one of those eggs I was even more surprised to find the yolks were almost a neon orange! I devised a taste test and color comparison with our CSA eggs and these eggs.  I made two batches of scrambled eggs - one with our CSA eggs and one with the farmers eggs.  The color difference is pretty astounding but James and I found that the farmers eggs are almost too grassy tasting!

The CSA eggs are on the left and the farmer's eggs are on the right.