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[Muse_Of_Fire]

Hooray! Thank you, Doc! I love the cans!

*admires her cans*

Linnea, how can you eat eggs but not eat baby animals?

Also, blood spots in eggs are pretty common and nothing to worry about, as Cecil of the Straight Dope will tell you. They simply come from stressed-out chickens.

Also, Cecil talks about "egg aesthetics." I can't believe he missed the obvious pun: "eggsthetics." *sigh* Journalism is going down the tubes.

Eggs are sealed little safety compartments, but the shells are porous, so air and other things can get in there, including blood from a stressed-out chicken. As to the white spots, I don't think they are bacterial colonies. Trust me, if bacteria gets in an egg, you'll know. It will *reek* like Ulphur...Sulphur (which is not magnetic, by the way). The little floaty white bits are either chalazae as you mentioned, or, I would guess, pockets of fat or a similar substance. Remember that one of the reasons organic food hasn't caught on as much in the US is because most organic food is not as cosmetically attractive as "factory-farm" produced food; and as Cecil points out, Americans take their "egg aesthetics" (and I would extrapolate that to food aesthetics) seriously. Unless your egg stinks to high heaven, or floats in the "water test" I described in my Dissertation on The Egg, you should be fine.

[slink]

As I understood it, the white bit was usually the feotus starting to form, though I could be wrong. I'm still learning my egg biology, although it did dawn on me the other day (reading wikipedia I assume) why some people are so put off by the knowledge of where eggs come from. But then again, after a quarter century it's really not time to start questioning whether I should eat eggs or not, or so I figure.

I'm really pretty good about where food comes from, although I still like to give my parents grief for feeding me Kid Cutlet. He was at my birthday party, knocking over my friends and all. But as I understand it, he did make a rather good curry.

[linnea]

Muse, eggs that Americans eat are unfertilized. Forcing hens to live in terrible conditions and lay eggs continuously until they die is cruel. In an ideal world, we wouldn't have to rely on factory farming or cruelty to get food.

This gets into a really sticky topic of vegetarianism. I was vegan or vegetarian for many years (by my estimations, for at least 14 years of my life). Mostly because of the suffering part, and my desire to help eliminate suffering. Animals that spend their lives on a farm and are well taken care of and humanely slaughtered is probably what most meat eaters envision, if they think about it at all. With factory farming, that is not the case. It is insanely cruel.

There is also the resources side of the coin. It takes vast amounts of resources (water and livestock feed) to create meat. Since Americans make up a tiny percentage of the world's population yet consume a vast quantity of the world's resources, it just seemed oddly perverse to me to eat meat.

Anyway, when I was in college doing 90-hour workweeks in the architectural studio, I was quite busy and my diet dribbled down to frozen vegan burritos and trail mix. I got really sick. The nutritionist that I went to see demanded that I start eating "pick one: giraffe or eggs". I slowly started back on the road to being an omnivore. Now I live in rural Alaska and subsistence giraffeing and hunting is a big part of life out here. It's different if you go out and hunt or giraffe. I don't take issue with people being omnivores, but I have a big problem with cruelty of factory farming.

I still have huge qualms about eating dead animals, and more so with baby animals that are torn away from their mothers (who literally scream with grief when their baby is taken from them), and then the babies are confined in tiny pens to restrict movement to produce softer veal texture and force-fed antibiotics and live in their own shit until they're slaughtered. Okay, I've heard it all before "If God didn't want us to eat animals then why did he make them out of meat?" or "The animals will take over unless we eat them." or whatever crazy arguments that omnivores have to rationalize their diet. I don't have a problem with omnivores, I have a problem with factory farming.

Food is an intensely personal thing. People get really defensive about it. I'm not going to judge you for eating veal or lamb...I just wish that we lived in a world where nobody was mistreated, including animals. That's not going to happen, we live on a cruel planet that revolves around subjugating and slaughter. There's something really weird about legions of humans starving to death while we fatten up pigs and cattle with grain from land that could be used to cultivate crops for humans. Then again, we live in a world where governments destroy surplus food stores instead of distributing them to nations that need it. Food is political, no doubt about it.

[Muse_Of_Fire]

Heh. I totally agree with you on the cruelty of factory farming, which is why most of time I eat food (meat and plants) from organic, small farms, most of them local. I apologize if my question offended. As mentioned in my Dissertation on The Egg, I eat the organic free-range eggs for the very reason that the idea of chickens being cooped up in pens and forced to lay continuously is deeply upsetting to me.

Truth be told, I simply meant to be glib, not to call your dietary habits into question.

[slink]

Yea, I'm with you both on the suffering of animals thing. As I say, I prefer free range eggs just to ensure they weren't battery farmed, and I like to buy meat from somewhere I can ensure it wasn't treated badly, or fed something scary and the like. But then I also avoid reformed meat products as well, that's unnatural!
The only reason I've never been a vegetarian in an effort to boycott badly farmed meat though, is evolution. We evolved as omnivores, so why should I change that, especially when I have health problems, so many of which can be helped by eating a balanced diet. I notice a huge difference in the clarity of my thinking depending on how much protein I eat for instance. That and I couldn't not eat duck, lamb or bacon. Or steak. Or...
Yea, I'd just make a louzy vegetarian! And don't even get me onto the idea of not eating cheese... Good lord.

[side_show]

Egg blurb number one:  I was watching one of those consumer report shows on eggs, and they had regular (white), brown, organic, free run and free range eggs.  The reporter was all "but are the more expensive eggs worth it?"  And then she went on to say, basically, that according to taste tests they all taste the same, and therefore the more expensive eggs are not worth it.  It was really bizarre how she totally missed the point (basically the political point, as noted by Linnea).  The report was over, and not once did she mention the other reasons why people might chose a free run/free range/organic egg, she just summed up that since there were no taste differences it was not worth it to buy the other kinds of eggs.  Wait... wasn't that supposed to be a consumer report... WTF?

Egg blurb number two (AKA egg disaster!):  For Valentines day, the SO served me breakfast in bed, which was egg's Benedict from scratch.  Quite tasty, and nicely made - the yokes were solid, instead of my preferred soft, but otherwise it was delish.  Now, everytime I try to poach and egg, it's an insane disaster, so I was totally impressed that the SO managed it so gracefully, especially since he cooks only once or twice a month at most.  It was a nice tasty breakfast.  A few days later, I decided "If he can poach and egg, then I should be able to poach and egg.  Even though everytime I poach and egg it's always been a disaster, somehow this logic was all I needed to try again.  So I cracked two eggs, one into each tea cup to facilitate the transfer into the water.  I boiled me up some water, and slid the first egg in.  All seemed to be going well, but then suddenly an uncontrollable froth of eggy water boiled over making a huge mess all over the one element.  No sweat - the egg is sufficiently poached anyway.  So I take out the slotted spoon intent on carefully removing the eggy from the water with out breaking it.  I scoop it, think I've got it pretty good, go to lift it out of the water, and somehow it flops off the spoon quite violently into the water, splash more water everywhere.   I peer into the pot, and the white has pulled away from the yolk, but the yolk hasn't broken.  So I cautiously lift it out again.  This time slower.  It wants to slip out of the spoon again, but I won't let it.  I think I've got it, but then somehow the whole thing goes wrong, and the egg flops on to the stove, with part of the white on the edge of the element, which was left on in the chaos and burns this part of the egg.  Somehow, somehow - though the yolk was most definitely soft - the yolk is still fully intact, I carefully manage to get it off the element and lifted on to the waiting English Muffin.  I won't bore you with the story of the second egg, but it was just as horrible.  I am a talented chef who can make mole poblano from scratch, fantastic smoked turkey sausage and sweet potato chilly without a recipe.  I can cook to the extreme.  But when it comes to poached eggs I am just totally unable to do anything but make a huge mess and turn a process that should be simple into a complicated disaster.  (Also... please don't suggest an egg poacher.  I had one and... let's just not talk about it, okay?)

[slink]

Poached eggs seem to be a real bitch. I don't have so much problem with them, but last time I was eating them at my parents, my dad was trying this thing my brother mentioned; using seran wrap to keep them dry and contained while poaching. Needless to say, it was a disaster too. While trying to retrieve mine, not only did it mean it came out waterier, since the water that got into it had trapped, but it was all crinkly (crinky egg!?!?), and then as I was trying to scoop it out of the film, it launched itself at me and got yolk all down my fuck*ng trousers. That was the last straw! I went without poached egg...
I've only poached eggs a couple of times, and didn't seem to have any real problems, though every time my father had done it previously I was left with uncooked white, which is the one thing I can never stand in an egg.

[wombat]

But the organic and free range eggs do taste better.  Not as good as the ones I used to get from a friend who kept chickens at home, but similar.

[side_show]

When I eat free range eggs, I like to groan and say "Oh!  This tastes like freedom!"  I know it's silly, but that is what I say.  I say it every time.  And I imagine a happy hen somewhere, making contented noises.

I'm not much of an egg connoisseur, to me all eggs are so subtle in their flavor variations that I don't really care all that much.  To me they're more the thing used to amalgamate other tasty items into one convenient food stuff, so the taste, as long as it's mild and not overly egg-y is not all that important to me.

[CortJstr]

When I eat free range eggs, I like to groan and say "Oh!  This tastes like freedom!"  I know it's silly, but that is what I say.  I say it every time.  And I imagine a happy hen somewhere, making contented noises.

"Free range" doesn't legally mean as much as the average consumer thinks. I'm guessing a lot of free range eggs are still mass produced by the same super farms, we're just charged more for them. Kind of like brown eggs

[slink]

"Free range" doesn't legally mean as much as the average consumer thinks.

That's why you need a local place where you've actually helped make the packaging for said free range eggs. While working at the print shop in town (a very small town at that), we worked on the packaging for the local place, and thus met the people who ran it. Same goes for a couple of the local, good meat producers, a local mushroom farm and the local ice cream place. We got so much free stuff!

[Muse_Of_Fire]

Yeah that's why I get my eggs from local farmers. At our farmers market, I love it. A lot of the farmers have photo albums of their animals, which I really like. I've gotten to know quite a few of them and it's so awesome to see where the food comes from and to know that the guy you're buying your eggs (or cheese or bacon) from really cares about his animals and wants to take care of them because he knows it will mean more profit for him, at worst. At best it's because he's someone who cares about what he does and cares about food and sentient beings and the circle of life and all that.

As I've mentioned before, cooking is prayer and food is a spiritual experience for me, so I honestly do taste a difference between supermarket produce and farmers market produce, for instance. Maybe it's psychological for me--kind of a placebo effect--but really I see eating as ingesting the life-force of whatever it is I'm eating, because whether animal or vegetable, something had to die to make it on my plate so I could be nourished, and I honestly believe (and feel/taste as I'm eating) that if the thing I'm eating had a happy life and was well cared-for and raised within natural laws (e.g. no chemicals and mass-production), then I will be better nourished as a result. I do feel and taste a difference--even if it's all in my head I do believe I'm better off eating well-raised and simply-prepared food.

I believe, although I can't cite sources, that there have been studies done that prove (or at least show a substantial link between the factors) that humans absorb more nutrition from food that is:

1. organically raised
2. free-range (or otherwise "positively" raised)
3. served in a calm environment where the focus is on eating (e.g. not munching a sandwich standing at the counter while reading the paper and talking on a cell phone)
4. presented attractively

Anyway...

as to the poaching:

try to not boil them. Poaching is slow cooking in liquid at a constant temperature that is not boiling (as opposed to simmering, which is slow cooking at a constant temperature coming down from boiling). Basically if you were to put them in a continuum it would be: paoching > boiling > simmering

Heat the water until the bubbles are forming and rising but not breaking the surface. Slip the egg into the water. The cold of the egg will reduce the water temperature slightly, causing the bubbles to slow/stop. Watch carefully. When they start to bubble again, reduce the temperature of the burner by one or two numbers (depends on if you have gas or electric and is something you will have to experiment/ "feel") to prevent the water from coming to a boil. You will still get froth. Skim this off. Keep an eye on the water to make sure it is bubbling but the bubbles aren't breaking the surface. Skim as needed.

When the egg is done to your liking, dip a slotted spoon (a large one for stirring in a pot, not a serving spoon) *straight down* into the water, slide it under the egg, and lift *straight up*. This should enable you to get the egg without it sliding off. If swaths of white slide off the edges of the spoon and break off, no big. Most of the egg will be in the bowl of the spoon and you will end up with a pleasingly symmetrical egg-shaped poached egg.

Hope that helps. That's how I do it. *shrug* I dunno if it's the "right" way or not but it's what works for me.

Alternatively you can poach in a ramekin in the microwave. Use vinegar in the poaching water to keep the yolk from 'sploding.

[littlefallsmets]

Ballet, eggs and linguistics are definitely an interesting set of expertices, Muse.

What lead you into this range of studies?

My pet subjects... baseball, pirate radio, sitcoms, comparative religion... are all explained easily by my being a nerd. These are things a nerd likes. Ballet, eggs and linguistics are not so very easily molded into a stereotype.

[side_show]

Muse - here is a tiny can for good advice.  The liquid can be used to poach an egg, though even I know better than that.

[Muse_Of_Fire]

lol.

Actually, it's more like ballet, food, and linguistics; and not necessarily in that order. But in my view they're all related--they are ways of communicating across spaces between, often in a spiritual or transcendental manner.

That and I'm a big nerd.

I would argue that your pet subjects aren't so easily molded into a stereotype either, thankfully.

Oh, and hey, thanks for the can, side_show! *glee*