I can remember when words like “cholesterol” and “heart attack” were said in the same breath as “egg yolks,” and experts warned if you ate more than a certain number of eggs a week, you could sit back and wait to feel chest pain.
As someone who had eaten her fair share of eggs, it didn’t sound right. But not wanting to take any chances, I became an less-yolk cook. I stopped eating my favorite sliced egg and tomato sandwiches, used one hard-boiled egg instead of five in potato salad and substituted egg whites for whole eggs in baking. Chocolate chip cookies had a funny anemic look, and two-egg cakes lost their sunny appearance, but it seemed a small price to pay for the supposed health benefits. The sell-by dates on eggs were a joke. A carton of eggs could linger in the refrigerator for months.
In one of those about-faces so typical on the nutrition front, the latest news is that eggs have now regained a place on a healthful diet. Of course, it’s not all right to wolf down four-egg omelets, but for healthy people, an egg a day is OK.
For dieters, eggs may help lose weight. In a study of people on calorie-controlled diets, those who ate two eggs for breakfast lost more weight and felt peppier than those who ate bagels, even though both groups ate the same number of calories. A nice little bonus, which might explain the weight loss, is that the egg-eaters felt fuller longer, and by the end of the day, they ate fewer calories.
I still can’t bring myself to make a cake that calls for a dozen eggs or a custard with eight yolks, but I’m back to eating egg sandwiches and baking two-egg cakes.
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One of the best things about grilling, (other than not having a dirty kitchen to clean up) is that tonight’s grilled feast, can be tomorrows quick dinner. Grilled steak, veggies, or chicken can be tossed into pasta or a frittata providing most if not all of the flavor in addition to a subtle smokiness. The other night we grilled chicken quarters and zucchini tossed with baby red onions. The next night I threw together a quick frittata: Into a 12-inch nonstick skillet went a pile of leftover linguine, next some chopped up deli ham, then the chopped leftover grilled zucchini (which was already seasoned of course). I then scrambled up 5 eggs and poured that over the contents of the pan, and sprinkled with some sharp white cheddar and feta cheese. Yum. Here is the zuchini ready to be grilled.
Zucchini and onions ready for the grill
Last time I boiled some eggs, I noticed something different about
them. The shell was stamped with the words “Born Free.” Very puzzling.
Are eggs “born” when they are laid, or does the “borning” take place at
hatching? Hmmm.
Turns out Born Free is a company in Watertown,
Mass., that packages and sells cage-free eggs (another puzzling
concept—isn’t it the chickens, not the eggs, that are cage-free?).
All this musing about eggs and chickens reminded me
of my grandmother’s chickens. Though I was raised in the city, my
grandparents lived in the country. In addition to chickens, my
grandmother’s menagerie included, at various times, pigs, sheep, cows
and a goat named Davy Crockett.
When the cousins gathered in the country for a
visit, we’d play on top of the cellar, a great place except for one
problem: You had to walk through the chicken yard to get there. Most of
the chickens were docile enough, but mixed in with the brood were some
that had less than pleasant beginnings—they were our Easter chickens.
Having been dipped in dye as chicks, they weren’t too fond of humans,
and kids were easy targets. As you raised the latch on the chicken yard
gate, you needed to carefully scan the area for any nearby Easter
chickens—easy to spot because these mostly white birds, as adolescents,
still had purple dye tips on their feathers. Then you’d run like the
dickens for the cellar roof. If you weren’t fast enough, the chickens
would charge, and if they got too close, they’d flog you. (For you
city-slickers out there, that’s when they jump on you and beat you with
their wings while pecking away with their pointy little beaks.)
OK, OK, I know. They had a rough childhood. But an
attack by a chicken is enough to make a chicken out of anyone.
