Posts Tagged ‘maximum omega-3 fatty acids in egg yolks’

10 Feb

Spring Egg Yolks

Posted by wooddogs3 in cooking, farmers market, greens, Ketogenic diet, Uncategorized, urban farm animals, urban homesteading, Vegetable dinners. Tagged: , , , , .

During the longest nights my laying hens take a rest, and if I want eggs I have to buy them at the Co-op. This is probably a good thing, because it keeps me aware that even the best winter eggs from local farmers aren’t as good as the glorious golden-yolked beauties that my hens start to lay in February. Greens and flaxseed make the yolks full of omega-3s  and carotenoids. The effort of keeping enough greens going under frost blankets to supply the chickens as well as my own kitchen really pays off now. Later on in the spring they will lay like crazy and I’ll have eggs to share and I’ll be making profligate dishes like low-carb cheesecake, which involves 16 egg yolks. But when the first tiny golden crocus crysanthus blooms in February, I begin to get the first few treasured eggs, with yolks of the same gold as the crocuses. For now, I get a couple of eggs a day and every one is cherished. Even low-carb bread becomes something wonderful when dipped into a rich creamy fried egg yolk. As far as I’m concerned, top-notch fried eggs go with everything, and I love a plate of cooked veggies and fried eggs for dinner. A fried egg or two makes any plate of vegetables into dinner.  But there are tons of other possibilities.

In celebration of earliest spring, I took a look at what other bloggers have done with eggs. Here’s a brief round-up.

First, I can’t resist pointing out one of my own favorite old posts.

https://albuquerqueurbanhomestead.com/2016/11/18/eggs-in-a-hurry/

 


Hank Shaw is one of the most wonderful foragers and foodies that I know of. As soon as I have more eggs, I plan to salt-cure some yolks by his method and grate them over greens.

https://honest-food.net/salt-cured-egg-yolks/

The wonderfully herbal green buttered eggs from The Nourished Caveman are a go-to recipe for me, and I vary the greens according to availability and mood.

https://thenourishedcaveman.com/green-buttered-eggs/

This one will never come out of my kitchen, because I can’t stand sardines in any form. But it is so nutrient-rich that you should have a look at it.

https://thenourishedcaveman.com/nutrient-dense-fishermans-eggs/

Crispy fried eggs are wonderful for making a salad into a meal.

https://nomnompaleo.com/post/104615214153/sunnyside-salad-crispy-fried-eggs-on-greens

And Martha Stewart adds mushrooms to an eggs and greens skillet.

https://www.marthastewart.com/852125/fried-eggs-greens-and-mushrooms

Or scramble your eggs a bit on the hard-cooked side and toss them into greens or salads as an ingredient.

 

18 Nov

Eggs: Great Healthy Food in a Hurry

Posted by wooddogs3 in cooking, farmers market, Uncategorized, urban farm animals, urban homesteading. Tagged: , , , , , , , , .

img_5076

Lately I’ve been thinking about the miraculous nature of backyard chickens. They are lovely to see, fun to hear, and all their waking hours they convert stuff you can’t eat into stuff that you can. I can’t keep mine loose because we have a large tribe of local coyotes, but every time I walk by their roofed yard and hear the pleasures and squabbles of chicken life, I feel better. Chickens fit easily into nearly every backyard and enrich soil, nutrition, and QOL.

Then there are the eggs. I feed my chickens a ton of fresh alfalfa and other green stuff in the summer. This time of year, their diet includes dandelions, mustard leaves, kale, and grass. The yolks are a glorious deep yellow and they are very delicious. I’m fond of eating them hard-boiled for snacks, often just shucked out of their shells while still warm and eaten with salt and pepper. Sometimes I want something a little more elaborate but not much, and that’s where an egg salad sandwich tastes just right. It can be made in less time than it takes to read about it if you keep some hard boiled eggs in the refrigerator. You will also need bread, mayonnaise, and some herbs.

My sandwich is a display of what eggs can do, because the base is a low-carb flatbread based on eggs and flaxseed and the mayonnaise is my homemade type. But you can use Hellman’s and any bread of your choice.
Egg salad can be elaborated with all sorts of stuff in it, or it can be a couple of tablespoons of mayonnaise with a small handful of suitable herbs snipped in; I used tarragon, green onion, and garlic chives in about equal quantities. Slice in two hard boiled eggs, stir and mash, and spread on the bread. I think it isn’t real egg salad without a lavish sprinkle of powdered chipotle chile on top, but use paprika instead if you prefer.

So my real point is, find a source of great eggs and eat them. Even the best eggs cost, at most, about 50 cents each, and they will make you healthier and simplify your life. If you hard-boil a dozen at a time, they are always waiting to be converted into egg salad, or other types of salad, or deviled. Asian salads with lots of herbs, some lime and fish sauce in the dressing, and a sprinkle of peanuts are especially good.  I love them sliced on top of a Thai jungle curry, or as the center of an Indian dish made by forming a large meatball of spiced meat around a hard-boiled egg and frying it. I can recall making a Mexican dish twenty years ago that involved soft corn tortillas filled with a green toasted pumpkin seed pipian and sliced hard-boiled eggs. I can even imagine making the basic egg salad above and plopping spoonfuls of it on very good crackers with some chopped kalameta olives or even caviar on top, as an easy and delicious appetizer.

If you need more ideas, there is a marvelous cookbook by Michael Ruhlman simply called “Egg” that every eager cook should read.

img_4855
img_4848
img_4867
image
DSCN0884

img_5077

2 Apr

The Plant That I Can’t Do Without

Posted by wooddogs3 in edible landscaping, front yard gardening, home food production, urban farm animals, urban homesteading. Tagged: , , , , , .

image

If I were a poet, I would write a hymn to alfalfa.  This workhorse plant is now all over my small property, improving soil and feeding the animals and indirectly feeding me.  For the first couple of years I labored fruitlessly to try to grow enough grass or clover to make a picnic circle, but ultimately I gave up and seeded the area with alfalfa.  What a gain in utility.  Alfalfa thrives in my alkaline soil. Its roots are reported to go down as much as 30 feet deep, and it is fairly drought resistant.  It is a bit sparse the first year but then fills out nicely. It fixes nitrogen and improves the soil. Early in the spring, usually by mid-March in my area, the vibrant green leaves are forming clumps.  It is a remarkably nutritious green, however I don’t usually eat it myself, although I will clip a few tender leaves off the tips and put them in cooked greens mixtures.  Chickens love fresh alfalfa, and it is quite astounding how much of it they will eat. Of course, this is providing all sorts of nutrients and greatly increasing the beta-carotene and omega-3 fatty acids in the egg yolks.  The yolks are beautifully vibrant orange. I grab handfuls of stems and cut them close to the ground with scissors, then go to the chicken pens and cut the stems into lengths 1 to 2 inches long, to make the plant easier for the hens to eat.  They start jumping against the door as soon as they see the alfalfa coming.   My goat relishes a handful of fresh alfalfa as a snack, although mostly she eats dried alfalfa hay.  I have little patches of alfalfa all over the yard now, wherever I had a bare space to fill, and I let at least one patch go to flower for the pleasure of seeing the bees mob the blue-purple blossoms.  I would estimate that each clump is cut four to six times between March and October.

I still wish that I had a lush smooth clover lawn to picnic on; alfalfa is clumpy and by the end of the season it is stiff with all the stems that you cut. You can’t sit right down on it.   But a large sheepskin in between you and the alfalfa makes it a much more comfortable resting place, and it is far more useful and durable than clover. Currently I’m experimenting with planting fruiting trees and berries into the alfalfa patches to see how they coexist. My hope is that the alfalfa will provide some nitrogen for the trees. I hope to report back in a year or two.

If I think about my property as a factory, alfalfa is mining the nutrients from the subsoil, combining them with water, carbon dioxide, and sunlight to make edible food, and transporting the food to the general marketplace at the soil surface. The chickens are eating from the market, breaking down the 16-carbon omega-3 fatty acids found in plants, and re-forming them into 18 carbon omega-3s that people can readily utilize, as well as making proteins and concentrating caratinoids and other nutrients. They contribute eggs and sometimes meat back to the common marketplace, where I “buy” the foody products with my labor and feed input, and happily devour them. It’s a beautiful chain.

image

These delicious eggs can be thought of as little bombs full of all the nutrients in alfalfa. But they are much easier for people to eat.