Wednesday, April 8, 2009

egg jam pie

Recent adventures in the land of foodery include eggs, jam and pie. First up: some girl in Captain America's school did a report on eggs for the Science Fair. She wanted to find out if there was any difference between farm eggs and store eggs. Her conclusion was that they are the same--same color, same taste, blah blah blah. Yeah. These look the same, right?
On the left, my egg, on the right, the store egg. The grass has just barely greened up, so the difference isn't as shocking as usual, but come on. Not the same color. Or taste, for anyone who is wondering.

I bet if she did the experiment in the summer when her chickens were foraging and eating bugs and grass instead of the same slop the debeaked egg machines in the sweatshops get they'd lay orange eggs too. Hey--I just got an idea for Captain America's project for next year! It's not plagiarism if we're trying to prove her wrong. I am going to mop the floor with those grade schoolers!

Next up: jam.
From the left: 1/4 C sugar, 3 T sugar, honey.

They were all pretty icy and not very sweet. I'm going to try doing 1:2 sugar/berries and see if that helps. I'm aiming for the money spot on the spectrum between red sugar and aspirin.

Then I made a Shaker Lemon Pie, because I've always wanted to, and The Kitchn had a recipe for it. I think it's the prettiest pie I've ever made, which was heartening after the red-headed stepchild I made last time. Here it is:
You can't see it, but the design in the top is of a tree. It's very fancy--I expect the grant money to start rolling in any day now.

But then we ate the pie. And it was a waste of lemons and pie crust.
This is all that is going to be eaten of the pie. Happy Thursday, chickens!

I liked the double-crustedness, and the jammy, gooey innards part, but the slices of lemon were texturally a bit much. If only I didn't live in FEUDAL ENGLAND around here and had a freaking MANDOLINE maybe the pie would have been worth eating, without such prohibitively thick slices of peel. I did my best, you guys, but the santoku can only do so much with that geometrical challenge.


tipsybaker said...

Sad about the pie. Interesting about the egg!
I need to post about my whey vs. water bagel experiment.

Sarah said...

Dude, that pie is beautiful! Bummer it wasn't as beautiful to your tongue. P.S. I made bread today. No, I'm not kidding. M'cause I had like an entire gallon of whey from making some cottage cheese, and it just feels wrong to throw it all away. Anyhoo, it's no gorgeous Shaker Lemon Pie, but it's bread...made by me...which is really sayin' something.

All8 said...

That was a beautiful pie. Stinks that it was so "shallow".

Farm fresh eggs are way better than store eggs. The shells hold up better. They are fresher and therefore more nutritious. The taste is also better. I know that Mother Earth News has been running tests on it and they have stuff dedicated to proving it one way or another on their web page.

True story back from when we had our own free range chickens. I made a batch of pancakes. There was a call for more but we were out of eggs. So I borrowed some store eggs from my MIL. Of course the color and flavor were different and of course nobody ate them. In the great circle of life, the chickens enjoyed them.

Now if the eggs that this girl used were from a farm where they are raised akin to those fouled factory foul then of course there would not be much, if any difference.