What's To Eat: Eggs

On our first weekend in town, we checked out a couple of farmers markets in the area. One was in nearby Fitler Square and the other was in West Philly, just beyond Penn's campus. As we expected, there were a lot of winter vegetables, particularly a great variety of squashes and winter greens such as kale. Since at that point our movers hadn't yet arrived, it didn't make much sense to buy fresh produce since we had no cooking tools on hand. However, on our return trip to our neighborhood, we stopped off at the Fitler Square market and bought a carton of farm fresh eggs. Now these are my kind of eggs -- all different shades of brown, some with speckles, some without. These eggs came from Sunny Side Farm in Elysburg, PA (which is actually about a 2.5 hour drive northwest of Philly.) In addition to chickens, the farm also has 60 goats, and the other products for sale included goat milk and goat cheese.

Eggs are a good source of protein; a large egg has just over 6 grams of this key nutrient. At 70 calories, an egg is a low-cal choice. A large egg has just under 5 grams of fat, but only about 1.5 grams of this is saturated fat. Other nutrients found in eggs include choline, lutein, phosphorus, and potassium. They are also an excellent source of Vitamin A.

In a perfect world, our eggs would come from our own hens in a backyard coop -- unfortunately, that will likely not be the case for awhile. A better-case (and more likely) scenario would be to purchase them from a local farmer or purveyor who can vouch for how the chickens are raised/what they eat/etc. When purchasing eggs in the grocery store, I typically opt for the carton that says "vegetarian fed" and "cage-free," though "free-roaming" would be even better. (Although, admittedly, these labels don't mean all that much for large-scale egg production, and "cage-free" may just mean that there's a door that the hens could go through to a dirt lot if they wanted to, but likely won't.) Hence, why I strongly advocate for finding a local egg-source that you can be assured allows the chickens to be themselves and behave naturally.

This is what I had for breakfast on Sunday -- one egg over medium alongside a slice of toast with organic strawberry conserve. I sprinkled a little bit of flax seed over my egg by accident -- I neglected to remember we had put the flax seed in our pepper shaker, but no worries, just means I added a few extra nutrients to my meal! I later seasoned the egg with a dash of salt and pepper. It doesn't get much more simple than that!