Since living afloat, we have got through the grand total of two dozen eggs.
I know this from my spreadsheet as the egg column has only 4 entries in it, five if you include today but I haven’t used them yet so they don’t count (except one) .
This is a photo of our very first egg laid by one of our own chickens seven years or so ago.
In the six months we’ve been here, I have not used the oven or grill at all, and only 2 of the 4 burners on the hob.
The main reason for not using the oven is that I’m not baking anymore, and the reason I’m not baking anymore is because I no longer buy the ingredients.
The reason I no longer buy the ingredients is because we don’t have the space to store them!
However, eggs are quite versatile and don’t have to go in a cake do they.
Maggie used to have a scrambled egg for her breakfast every morning, some laid by Scraggy here, the only chicken we named and who outlived the other four.
It was a treat for us to have a fried egg on top of beans on toast for our tea sometimes, and poached eggs never tasted so good as that Easter weekend.
And boiled eggs with soliders……………….yummmmmmm.
However, egg prices have escalated somewhat, and having been out of touch for just a few weeks in between abodes (or in our case, a boat, get it??), we were somewhat stunned to see that a pack of 6 was now over a pound, whereas we’d been buying a tray of 15 practically every week for £1.24!
My budget is quite simple as well as being tight, if the cost is more than I think is reasonable, things stay on the shelf. But with eggs, it was slightly different as they were always a good stand by for something quick like omelets or to put in a sandwich.
Eggs also have a good shelf life. The ‘best before date’ can be almost a month ahead which is good for us as we tend to, er, go beyond that these days, then suddenly have scrambled eggs for tea, breaking each one separately into a cup first just in case one has ‘gone off’.
I used the last of our eggs on Sunday to a) help settle Maggie’s tummy and b) they were almost a week beyond their BBD.
Today we remembered to replace them when we bought our weekly 6 cartons of UHT milk, and had a very pleasant surprise to find a special offer of 6 for half price at 49p, with a BBD of 11th February.
This particular supermarket does not provide carrier bags free of charge, so we took in a canvas bag, putting the milk in the bottom and the eggs on the top.
The bag went on the back seat with Maggie.
As we were driving home, Maggie was pacing and I could hear the plastic egg carton cracking every time she brushed against it. I just hoped that the eggs inside weren’t cracking too!
Back at the boat, Hubby put the bag on the bed as he was taking off his shoes.
Good job he has good reflexes, as the egg carton fell out of the bag and would have hit the floor if he hadn’t caught it.
Unfortunately, one egg had cracked on impact with his hand, so that was the 25th egg consumed in our 26 weeks here as I had it scrambled for my tea (with a little bit for Maggie).
Long live the egg! 😉
When you think about it, without eggs (of any description) there would be no life!
Well they still try to decide if the egg or the chicken was first… 😉
so true!
During summer Daughter will often arrive home after her early morning jog with a pocket full of eggs. “Where did you find these ones?” She just grabs them as she sees them running around the village. Freshly laid eggs, yummy. Never mind the thievery!
There’s nothing like cracking a warm shelled egg into your cake mix, and the end result tastes like nothing you buy in the shops!