My Omelets are Better Than Yours

Unless You Own Your Own Chickens

Unless you own your own chickens, I am certain that the eggs I cook are better than yours. Before you get all huffy, let me be clear … I am not saying I am a better cook. I just have better ingredients.

But I have better ingredients.

The Egg Man

Each Wednesday we carry our small cardboard egg carton to the Mercado da Vila. The egg man seems to appreciate the fact that we are recycling last week’s container rather than forcing him to provide another. Though we haven’t exchanged names or phone numbers (yet), it is clear that he remembers us. We receive 6 large, brown, freshly laid eggs for ,90Euros (that’s $1.08 US as I write this). Frankly, I would be willing to pay a lot more. You see once you have tasted a real egg, laid by a happy chicken who is roaming about eating grass and bugs rather than processed pellets filled with antibiotics, you will never go back.

Holland, 2016…Denise takes in the sights from the bow.

First Awareness

I first became keenly aware of eggs during a trip to Europe in 2016. We started in Dublin with another couple from Florida. After a few days, we headed to Scotland to visit friends while they toured Ireland. We met up in Barcelona for a few days, then headed to Greece. We left Greece after about a week and flew to Amsterdam, then took a train to Hindeloopen-Stavoren where we picked up a 44’ canal boat which we rented for a week. You may be wondering: Did they provide you a captain? NO. Were any of you experienced, boat captains? NO. Did you have a guide? NO. At the time there wasn’t even a recommended itinerary. They simply provided 7 nautical charts, 45 minutes of orientation on the boat, and sent us on our way. Despite this, we returned the boat to Workum as planned one week later without a scratch on it. The best week while vacationing ever! But I digress…

The point of the story is that I made omelets the first morning onboard and have never received so many accolades for my cooking in my life. In fact, I became the designated cook for the entire week and breakfast was everyone’s favorite meal of the day. It was just impossible to make a bad omelet having purchased fresh eggs from the local market each morning. The yoke was a deeper yellow. The shells were nearly unbreakable. They are so fresh, they are not refrigerated. It actually had flavor!

Pasteur Raised

When we returned to the states, I recall the experience of breaking my first supermarket egg. I literally crushed it. I actually googled, “what makes an eggshell harder”. Call me inquisitive ... but I tend to use the google-machine a lot. I learned the eggshell hardness reflects the age of the bird, what it is eating, how stressed it is, etc.

We started buying “cage-free” eggs…but quickly learned (google again) that this was a misleading term. We settled on pasture-raised, paying as much as $4.99/dozen. Occasionally we could find good eggs at a farmer’s market and didn’t care what we spent.

While I am certain our monthly grocery bill is less here than in the states, the freshness and the quality of the food are so much better. And I suspect it is healthier. It is just one of the many benefits of this expat experience.