What's that teeny tiny little egg? It's our first pullet egg of the year.

Today is normally Pizza Friday here on Five Wooded Acres. That's been temporarily suspended due to crazy amounts of eggs in our fridge....any takers? Seriously, we've been getting 4-5 eggs a day for the past 4 days and it's starting to catch up to us....help! (That one on the left was laid today--somebody took a peck out of it)


So today we decided to make something using eggs for dinner. Pretty simple really. First you saute some peppers, onions, and crumbled prosciutto (ham would be good too, I'm sure) in some olive oil. Add whatever seasonings suit your fancy.....


Then you beat 6 eggs, and 1 cup of milk together in a bowl.


Add the sauteed veggies to a pie plate (make sure to drain the oil off first!), then pour the egg mixture over it. We added some parmesan cheese to the top too.


Bake at 375 degrees Fahrenheit for approximately 30-40 minutes, or until the center is puffed and a knife inserted one inch from the center (not exactly the center--that's supposed to still be soft) comes out clean.

Today we brought in our thirteenth egg from the chickens. What's really cool, is that this one is bigger than the storebought eggs....and doesn't look like a double-yolker, either. It's just big. They've been getting gradually bigger and I think this one has finally topped out.

On Friday we got our seventh egg from the chickens (then, this afternoon we got an eighth).


So we decided to have fried eggs for breakfast...
(and yes, that very first egg was a double-yolk)


They're still on the small side since the hens just started laying, and we noticed a few things right away. The yolks are dark orange, nothing like the eggs from the grocery store. The yolks were on the small side, too, but very round and they seemed to sit up higher in the whites. The shells were all thicker than the standard grocery store fare, too.



They were absolutely delicious...I've never tasted an egg so good before (not that I'm biased or anything) :-) They were really rich and almost yolky....hard to describe, but I thought they tasted healthier. And they should, since our chickens have free range of the yard (and munch on greens all day) and get scratch grains (mostly corn and oats) every morning.

On Monday we found another egg in the nestboxes. It's from one of the Red Stars. That's a half dozen so far, and much earlier than I thought we would get that many....but I do wish the White Rocks would keep up! :-)


Oh--and a gratuitous duck picture...aren't they getting big? Napoleon is getting a little curled feather on his tail...so he might be a male. No other tail curls so far...

Yesterday we made ice cream. Why? Well, why not? You see, we have this water filter owing to our well water. Part of it is a water softener and uses salt pellets (they're big when you put them in, the size of 2 peanuts next to each other). When the salt gets used up, and it's time to add more, it looks like rock salt.


Doesn't that just beg for an ice cream maker? What could be more perfect than a supply of rock salt in your basement?

We didn't want to go get cream or half and half or any of that, so we used a simple milk-sugar-vanilla recipe. That means it isn't as creamy as some recipes, or as the custard-based ones (although the third Red Star laid its first egg, so now we have 4 of our own eggs that we could have used for that...hmmm...)

First you mix your ingredients together in the canister of your ice cream maker.


The recipe claims to make 1 gallon, which is just how much our ice cream maker says it can hold. Then you just put your ice cream maker together, add salt and ice, and let 'er rip. (This is when we moved it outside, just in case it got messy...)



Once it's done churning, it'll need to harden up in the freezer for another hour or so, then--voila.

Easy 4-ingredient Vanilla Ice Cream

8 cups milk (we used whole milk)
2 cups white sugar
1 tbsp vanilla extract

Combine ingredients in the canister of your ice cream maker and stir. Then just follow the directions for your individual ice cream maker to freeze/churn, since they're all different. We assembled the canister into the center of our mixer, and added layers of ice and "rock" salt until it reached the top of the canister. Then we just turned it on to churn for the specified time in the manual (in this case 20-40 minutes). After that, we took the lid off to check on consistency. It had thickened nicely, so we just removed the canister and stuck it in the freezer to harden for another few hours. Yum.

Notes: Next time we'll add double the vanilla flavor--and while delicious, I'm sure it would have been creamier had we used some cream.

Tuesday evening, we found another egg in the nestboxes. This one was from one of the Red Stars, we know since S. saw it laying.