Eggs-pert Photography!

These eggs are so interesting that they demanded to be photographed! They are the eggs of the Aracauna hen from Steep Hill Farm in Gillette, NJ.  Aracaunas are called the Easter Egg chicken because the eggs range from greens to blues and browns. 

These eggs are from a farm that produces fertilized broiler eggs for incubation.   As you can see, the eggs on the left are not at all perfect and a good percentage of eggs laid have similar appearance issues.  Much larger ones are usually double yolked while the very largest, outsized for sure, are double shelled on occasion.  Colors vary from light buff all the way to deep brown and even a greenish hue.  All of these chickens were snow white.

These are my favorite eggs and I took this shot of the carton so you could see three important things:  Cage free, certified humane and USDA organic (for more on this see my earlier post).  The grade AA means that the white or albumen is especially thick with a higher Haugh rating than grade A eggs.  These eggs come from Costco and are stunningly better than any others I have found.

This is pidan or a thousand year old egg purchased in NYC Chinatown.  This preserved duck egg was not actually stored for a thousand years but rather for around 40 days.  I really can’t see myself eating these!  Had also purchased salt preserved duck eggs but they were too gross to photograph.  I know the pidan are chopped up and added to congee.  I opened two, and they looked like this - now that’s good eating!