My Pet Chicken Blog

Egg color: Traci posted about the “secret danger” of obsessing over egg color earlier this year. She worries over which eggs to cook with, and which eggs to keep in her egg basket. I agree; I feel as if some eggs are real works of art, and it feels like a crime to crack them!  As Traci explained it, “What if someone unexpected drops by? I want the most spectacular-looking egg basket with which to wow them.”

Natural egg color sure can WOW!

Many of you agreed with Traci, too, judging by the comments on her post! Me, too: I am obsessed with egg color. I don’t keep a daily egg basket on my counter like Traci does, but I do arrange our eggs in specific patterns in their cartons, so as to show off the color variations to most effect. I am careful to get the undyed cartons, too, because I’ve determined that the neutral color is the best way to set off all the different egg colors we get.

Even my husband has picked up on my egg-arranging weirdness. When he gathers eggs, he knows I don’t want all the eggs of one color clustered together. I want the colors scattered out, alternating. Sweet of him to notice and pick up on that on his own. It’s nothing I had to tell  him (although he may have gottent he message early on if he caught me rearranging the eggs he just gathered, hahaha!) And THEN, once the eggs are all arranged and clean in their cartons, when it comes time to share eggs… I admit I even I obsess about which carton to give to whom.

This past weekend, for instance, I had gathered eggs to share. Since we had so many blues and greens that day–some of my brown and chocolate egg layers are molting–I had a whole carton of blue and green eggs, and I designated that carton to share with some friends of ours who have two young daughters that love the blue and green eggs. Even though our brown eggs are just as delicious, they told me once that their girls loved the “colored” eggs the best. Perfect! I knew just what eggs to give them.

(My daughter was the same way at that age–in fact she once forbad me from gathering blue or green eggs. ”Those are mine,” she informed me with great solemnity. “I’ll get THOSE kind.”)

So, I prepared a full carton of blues and greens for them… and promptly forgot to give it to them before they left. It was a minor tragedy, and I kicked myself about it for three days.

I had the blues, and so did my eggs.

Sad egg is sad.

So, please tell me what YOU do. When you share eggs, do you arrange the colors and carefully pay attention to what egg goes where in the carton? Do you save specific eggs for specific friends, or do all the green eggs go to your grand kids? What color egg cartons do you prefer? Or maybe you just think I’m strange. If so, don’t worry. Believe me, I’ve been told that before!