Lovely brown eggs and non recipes

We got fourteen eggs the other day. I guess the girls are noticing the extra light as well. I think we've seen our slowest egg days of the year. On Winter Solstice we got down to about three hours of sunlight. The following day we gained fifteen seconds back, followed by thirty seconds the next day. Now we are gaining over six minutes of daylight each day. The downside of being on a west facing sloped hill is that our sun is so low on the horizon that our property doesn't see the sun in December or January. The sun seems to make it over the tree line in the early days of February. Yesterday it was shining through the thick spruce forest. The chicken coop is higher on the hill and therefor, they usually get to bask in the sun a week before is shines into the house. Our dark days are almost over, and sunny winter days of eye blinding sun on snow are on the horizon. Here are some more egg pictures. I just can't take enough pictures of eggs, I only wish I were a better photographer and had a better camera to do them justice.

 

 For those of you have been reading along for a while, you know that these lovely dark brown eggs are out of our Welsummer hens. Here are a couple other posts about our Welsummers: wildrootshomestead.blogspot.com/2009/why-welsummers.html and wildrootshomestead.blogspot.com/2009/10/hermaphrodite-chicken.html

We have three Welsummer hens and they each have a slightly different egg. Two are still laying pullet eggs; one is laying darker narrower eggs without any spots and the other rounder lighter spotted eggs. Then one is laying larger eggs, a couple have been huge, not long but very round and wide, look like they hurt.

 

Before

After

Now the Ameraucanas just need to start laying more so we have more blue eggs.

We eat a lot of eggs. I make devilled eggs and egg salad every other weekly or so. I made some yesterday and here is the picture. The jar has homemade mayonnaise. Noah will eat hard boiled eggs. They both eat devilled eggs and the salad. Both make a nice afternoon snack to hold everyone over till dinner. In the winter we eat fried eggs a couple times a week. Lately I've also been making omelettes, just real quick ones with a little bit of goat milk, scallions and a bit of cheese.

I found a great recipe for egg muffins in one of my favorite breakfast cook books, Mollie Katzen's Sunlight Cafe. The muffin cups start out with melted butter, add bread crumbs to the bottoms. Then whisk eggs with goat cheese, salt, pepper and scallions, pour into cups. Bake for about twelve minutes and top with a little parmesan or other cheese. They are kid friendly as far as easy to hold, soft and tasty. And they reheat pretty good, I might try freezing a couple and see how they survive. I saw another egg recipe that I'm going to try soon that involves muffin cups. But you don't whisk the eggs. Rather, you line the cups with a slice of ham or (fill in the blank) then put something tasty in the bottom, salsa or sauteed veggies, then crack a couple eggs into each cup and top with a little cheese or bread crumbs, then bake to your liking. Sounds like my kind of recipe, or non-recipe rather. Versatile and quick.