Eggs!

What a weird thing to post about you say?! Well, stay with me. You will be glad you did. Our home has a proliferation of eggs at all times. Last year I froze the extras and we still have many of them so I haven't yet frozen this year. The egg basket ALWAYS has at least 3 dozen eggs in it. I use two recipes that use 4 eggs each at least twice a week. Bread and brownies. I give eggs away regularly. Just sell 'em you say. Well, it's not quite that easy when you breed for chicks.
The chemistry is as follows:
Chickens get busy (romantically),
Hen lays egg,
Many times many hens lay in the same box throughout the day, after x hours egg is no longer just an egg, it is an embryo.
Now, most people are just not interested in buying eggs in different stages of chick development for eating.
Also, mine free range (I let them loose to eat bugs etc) That makes the egg a bit stronger flavored. Some folks aren't too keen on that.
Lastly, if I am selling a lot, I run out of eggs for us and for breeding. But eggs for selling really are best if the roosters are removed. Then there is no chemistry issue.
Ok, back to the point. My family takes our eggs for granted and isn't always gracious about things. For example, there is a whining/groaning aspect about having to open the eggs into a separate cup rather than right into the pan etc. They hate it that they might need to wash the eggs. They want the convenience of white store bought eggs. Sometimes our sunny side up eggs are a little stronger than store bought so the whining commences over that too. Of course no one is whining over the yummy bread, brownies or boiled eggs on command.
But even I don't enjoy scrambled eggs that taste really yolky. Then this morning I got an epiphany. I grew up always adding a little milk to the scrambled egg mix. I never questioned why, we just did it. However, when Teflon pans came along the mix was too goopy so I ditched the practice.
This morning it dawned on me that maybe the milk was added to the eggs to sweeten the taste since both sides of my parent's families had farms/chickens as they grew up. I had always assumed it was to stretch the eggs since we were big families who had very healthy appetites. Well. viola! My scrambled eggs were wonderful! Mild and light yellow just like I love them!
Now on to the rest of the story-
Rakieta's mom walked several miles (3-5) to bring Rakieta eggs. R's family is very poor, BUT they keep chickens and in Burkina Faso, eggs are a HUGE luxury. Her mom brought her 16 eggs. She told me how she split them and who she shared them with. Folks, imagine a woman walking that far in the heat and traffic without real great storage to keep the eggs from cracking and giving them to her daughter who painstakingly took them by taxi to her school where she gave some to her best friends who lovingly saved them all day, took them home by whatever transportation they had, perhaps more walking, perhaps moped.
Each egg is worth something like .75 to $1.00 and they are just hard to come by. That is from not understanding utilizing better farming methods AND just plain lack of resources.
I think about my overabundance of eggs and the whining in my family about our eggs and the lack of conveniences they perceive. Then I think about the painstaking care R's mother's eggs received. Oh how lucky we are in this great country of ours!