The 13 Days of Pumpkin: Birthday Shoutout!

Where's your party hat, pumpkin?!

Today is an historic day: First, it marks the day in 1781 that the combined American and French armies forced General Lord Cornwallis to surrender the British army, effectively ending the American Revolution, and second, it marks the official entry of my father into senior citizenhood!  Yeehaw and happy day, Yankee Daddy!  (It's also my cousin's birthday--significantly less advanced in years than my dad--so I'd like to happy day holla at him!)

There was a year when my sister and I were little that my dad was unemployed and we got to spend a lot of quality time with Yankee Daddy.  The thing I remember best of all from this time was the French toast he would make for us some mornings (and that my sister picked up on my dad's English accent and started dropping her R's).  So in honour of Yankee Daddy's day of birth and our fest of fall gourd, tonight's recipe is Pumpkin French Toast.

A very simple yet scrumptious recipe: In a shallow bowl or pie tin, whisk together 3 eggs, 1/2 cup milk, 3/4 canned pumpkin and 1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice until smooth.  Slather both sides of sliced bread in the mixture and cook 1-2 minutes each side on a hot skillet or griddle until golden.  Top with maple syrup and serve with your favourite breakfast side (did someone say BACON?!).  Told you it was simple!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY POPS!  I LOVE YOU!

Birthday Toast!  Make a wish!

In Memorium

For those of you who noticed the gap in posts here a couple weeks ago (and perhaps none of you did, since I'm not what anyone would consider "regular" with my posting), the reason for that is a sad one.  I should have mentioned in my opening post that I use "Yankee" somewhat ironically, seeing my father's entire heritage is English (and he himself is one of those straight-off-the-boat type immigrants) and I am rather an Anglophile (you've noticed the -our and -ise?), despite living in the good ol' US of A.  Regretfully, I never got to visit the Motherland, nor, more importantly, the family living there, as often as I would have liked, so I can't say I'm at all close with my relations there, but distance certainly doesn't affect the love you inherently feel for those with whom you share some DNA.  On July 20th, I received the sad news of the death of my dad's mother.  The idea for this particular post developed almost instantly, but I was waiting for the details of her funeral, as I wanted to post it that day.  So here we are, then.

She wasn't an easy woman, my Nan, but she could knit like a fiend and gave the very best squeezy bear hugs.  Today her ashes will be scattered at her lawn bowls club, to mingle with those of the husband she lost several years ago.  I love you, Nan, and we all miss you.

Since I can't be in England today to see her off, I wanted to do a tribute post to celebrate her life.  First, we need her drink.  She had two, actually, sherry neat and a shandy.  I like sherry, and I would happily have toasted her with said liquor, except I'm poor.  I do, however, have plenty of beer on hand and lemonade is cheap, so we are experimenting with shandies today, for my Nan.  Beer and lemonade.  Hm.

Well hey!  There's a pleasant little surprise.  Beer plus lemonade doesn't suck!  In fact, it's actually quite tasty and refreshing!  Good taste, Nan, and cheers!

Next we have the main course, a British standard that Nan made us when we visited back in '97, a dish so delicious that I've made it one of my specialties: Shepherd's Pie.  This is a recipe I first got from a book called Traditional British Recipes, it's the recipe my dad the Englishman calls shepherd's pie, and yet a friend of mine recently asked the question, "Is it real shepherd's pie or is it cottage pie?"

A shepherd.  Tending a sheep.

Turns out, there's a recent distinction in some circles between shepherd's pie, which they claim should be made with lamb, since that's what shepherd's deal in, and cottage pie, which should be made with beef, since that's what...hang on a tick.  There seems to be a kink in the logic here.  I was taught it was called shepherd's pie because it was an easy dish for shepherds to take with them into the field.  And I've even used ground turkey in this recipe, when I suddenly realised I was down to half a pound of beef and was attempting to feed several men.  Wikipedia, the all-knowing and never wrong, seems to favour my theory that there is, in fact, no real difference between a shepherd's pie and a cottage pie, except to these few individuals that think shepherds would like to eat their own little lambs and cottages have an affinity for cows.  The point of this tirade is that it's a shepherd's pie, regardless of what meat you feel like using, and it's certainly shepherd's pie for the purposes of this post because it's my blog.  So there.  Hmph.

A cottage.  Doesn't tend much.

So how does one go about making a shepherd's pie?  I'm happy to say that it's a relatively easy thing to throw together, something even those of you with dangly bits could handle (yes, Southern Blogger, I'm talking to you), though it's not something you want to do when you're massively hungry.  I'd stick to the drive-thru then, as shepherd's pie is a bit of a time taker.

The key to shepherd's pie is the mashed potatoes.  They seem like such an easy thing to make, but I have seen some abominations in my day, so I'm actually going to go step by step and teach you the proper way to make them--if you make them any other way, you are likely a Communist and should start making them my way immediately.

Start with real potatoes.  Potatoes from a box or a packet are not potatoes.  Real potatoes.  Peel them.  Wash them.  Cut them, and cut them small. 

Yankee Baker's mum gets mad when I insist on cutting them small, but I'm always asked to make the mashed potatoes when I'm home, so I think that says something.  Don't mince them, they don't need to be THAT small, but say, quarter inchish or so--they will cook faster and mash nicer.  Toss your small potatoes into a pot (use a pot large enough to give you room to mash), just cover them with water, add some salt, cover the pot, throw it on the stove to boil.  When the tatties get boiling, turn the heat down to simmer and allow to cook.  Test tenderness with a knife; once you can slide through them easily, your spuds are done.  Drain potatoes.  Add a chunk of butter and a few splashes of milk.  Again, I recommend something with a little fat, and also real cow milk--I have been forced to make mashed potatoes with almond milk in desperate times, and they turn out all right, but not quite as creamy and a little grey looking.  Real cow milk, say of the 2% fat variety, will give you really lovely mashies.  Add just a couple splashes of milk to start with; better to have too little than too much, you don't want soup.  Use a proper potato masher (though in dire circumstances I have Macguyvered a pastry cutter to suit the purpose) and smash those puppies. 

Baking, arguably my forte.  Drawing potato mashers

with perspective, decidedly NOT.

I suppose the technique I use could be considered "whipping," as i use sort of a circular motion in the wrist.  Just make sure you get all the potatoes mashed in, no chunks, adding little bits of milk if needed.  And voila!  Proper mashed potatoes.

Okay, so for your shepherd's pie, get your potatoes started first.  While they're working up to a boil, get your meat going.  Ground whatever. 

Mutton, Beef, Turkey, Wild Game (not pictured),

Soylent Green (also not pictured.  Also not recommended.)

Toss it in a skillet, break it into bits, get it going.  Slice up some carrots--thin, so they don't take forever to cook--and, if you're so inclined to eat it, some onion.  I can't stand the texture of real onions in my mouth, so I just use onion powder or dehydrated minced onion.  Add your veg once the meat is no longer pink and let everything cook for a while.  By this point your tatties will be close to done.  When they are, drain about a cup of the water over a beef bullion cube (waste not, want not!) to create a stock.  This is where I do listen to Yankee Momma, who likes a nice moist shepherd's pie.  If you're making a large casserole to feed many mouths (a solid pound of meat, 5-6 potatoes), you want a full cup plus.  If you're doing a smaller casserole (half a pound meat, 3-4 potatoes), do about 3/4 cup.  Mash your mashies and set aside.  When the meat and veg are done cooking up (you want the meat to be brown and the carrots to not be overcooked), dump the lot into a casserole dish.  Add your stock, salt, pepper, parsley, thyme, Worcestershire (say it with me now: WOO-ste-shur) sauce and mix it around.  Top with mashed potatoes, like icing a cake!  Pop that puppy in a 350 degree oven for about 45-50 minutes.  Add shredded cheddar cheese and some more parsley and bake an additional 5 minutes, or until cheese is melted.  And now you have made shepherd's pie!

Our next and final recipe is, seeing as this is a memorial post, a Funeral Pie.  And the recipe will be preceded by a tremendous historical diatribe.  Gird your loins :)

I have a morbid obsession with all things, well, morbid.  I love ostheology/forensic anthropology (and am in deep thought about how to pursue this as a career without going back to school), I happily stroll through old graveyards, and I even developed a programme for a museum called "Death and Dying in the 18th Century" (not the cleverest of titles, but the programme itself was pretty bleeping epic).  There is a giant wall sized exhibit on the 7th floor of the Winterthur Museum showcasing early American mourning jewelry that makes me drool.  I have delivered a (drunken) chronology of headstone iconography.  Yes, I'm weird. 

I will have to leave it to my sister, the degree holding anthropologist, to speak to funerary customs of various aboriginal cultures, but in the Western world, funerals and food are very closely linked.  In modern day America, the bereaved are often plied with gifts of casseroles and other dishes that are easy to keep and easy to reheat, the logic being that those in grief are not going to be in any sort of shape to be cooking.  But this tradition of feasting around a funeral has even more pragmatic roots: quite frankly, nothing sticks it in the face of Death than a whole gang of folks stuffing their faces with life sustaining food.  In the 18th century, the bereaved family would organise a massive spread for those in attendance of the funeral, including, in certain cultures, special funeral treats.  The Dutch and English would bake small cakes in honour of the deceased, the Dutch often using caraway seeds to form the initials of the dead on the top of the cake.  The English would wrap their dead cakes in paper printed with initials and/or images of death: skull and crossbones, coffins, skeletons, death's heads and the like.  The transition begins toward the end of the 18th and into the 19th century, but prior to this time, we were all very accepting of death as a fact of life.  Everyone dies.  No avoiding it.  Young children, particularly in the Puritan northeast, were brought up to the coffin to look at the face of the deceased: see that, kids?  You'll get there some day.  A very popular epitaph on headstones prior to the 19th century went, in a jaunty little quatrain, "As I am now/You one day will be/So prepare for death/And follow me."  We see a slight softening of these harsh constructs as we get into the 1800s, and then Victoria takes the throne and, as with weddings and Christmas, everything changes.  Post-Victoria, we've turned death into rather a taboo--don't talk about it around the kids, and how many euphemisms do we have for it?  It's not all Vicky's fault, though; we can blame the advent of modern science and growth of hospitals as well for our present-day detachment from death.  Today we don't have to suffer the deaths of the young in such high numbers as we did in the past, infant and childhood mortality rates being much higher due to illnesses for which there were no cures, accidents and simple infections.  With medical advancements, people are surviving things they didn't use to and living much longer lives--and as a result, are typically dying in places like hospitals and nursing homes, removing the omnipresence of death seen in the early days of our history from our everyday lives.  The Germans-turned-Pennsylvania-Dutch retain to this day a funerary food custom that is the focus of this portion of today's post: funeral pie aka raisin pie (I guess for when you're making it on non-funeral days?  Or just to make it sound less morbid).  The traditional recipe for this pie uses only ingredients every kitchen would have in stock on a permanent basis: flour, sugar, butter and dried fruit (raisins, in this case), as you just never know when someone is going to die.  It's hard to make a traditional funerary pastry using anything fresh, as historically that particular ingredient wouldn't be available most times of the year.  So shrivelled up grapes win the show here, and I should make the note that I hate raisins.  I do however, enjoy sultanas, which is the classy Britishism for "golden raisins." 

Don't ask me why, but I like the green grape version better than the red grape version--and it honestly might have at least a little something to do with the word "sultana."  I should also note that for today's pie, I will be cheating and using the pre-made stuff.  Don't judge, I've already proven to you I can make a pie crust, and besides, I'm grieving.  So here we go, funeral pie.

1. Put 2 cups sultanas (or raisins) and 2 cups water into a saucepan.  Bring to a boil and allow to do so for 5 minutes.
2. While that's boiling up, combine 1/2 cup packed brown sugar, 2 tablespoons cornstarch, 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon and 1/4 teaspoon salt into a bowl.  Mix together.  Add this mixture to the sultanas after 5 minutes.  Knock the heat down a bit to avoid jam caliber mess and injury (I promise these is a story here and I promise it will be told in a future post) and stir the mixture till it's not cloudy (a few minutes), then remove from heat.
3. Add 1 tablespoon butter and 1 tablespoon lemon juice.  Stir together till butter is melted and let cool slightly.
4. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  Line the bottom and sides of a 9" pie tin with one crust (or half of the dough you made if you decided to show me up and go from scratch), fill with cooled sultana mixture.
5. Top pie with second crust.  Pinch edges to seal, trim excess, slit top to vent.  Brush top with a bit of milk and sprinkle with a pinch of white sugar in a process I like to call "prettifying your pastry."
6. Bake at 400 degrees for 25 minutes, or till golden brown.  Allow to cool completely before nomming.

So there we are, kids.  In honour of my Nan, may she rest in peace, make yourself a shandy tonight while you whip up a nice shepherd's pie.  I won't encourage the funeral pie, because of context, but keep it on the back burner as a just-in-case.  Bless you, Nan, I miss you and love you, forever and always. xx

My Adventures in Carrot Caking, or, Mr Wiggles Gives It Two Paws Up

Recently I decided to clean out the fridge and freezer.  This decision was mostly motivated by the need to stow four loaves of zucchini bread, but also because both my original roommates moved out and I thought it might be nice for new roommate to have some room for her groceries (I'm generous like that).  After tossing a styrofoam tray of burger patties from last year's Labour Day soiree, several bags of Frankenproduce, and much moldy god-only-knows-what in Tupperware and scrubbing mysterious sticky substances from shelves and drawers, things were looking much better.  And I realised that boy roommate had left behind four bags of baby carrots.  Four.  Bags.  Of baby carrots.  Granted, two of the bags were only about half full, but still.  Four bags of baby carrots.

See?  Four bags of baby carrots.


The funniest thing is that I don't ever remember this kid eating a single carrot in the 13 months that he lived in my house.  And yet there were four bags of them in my fridge.  Oh, and if you're wondering about the dark, skunky looking things in the bag on the bottom left, those aren't some swanky special heirloom coloured carrots (carrots do in fact come in purple, yellow and white, but because someone decided carrots looked better in orange, selective breeding makes those pretty rare).

Those would be the fully rotten carrots that made most of the bag slimy and gross.  So not only were there four bags of baby carrots in my fridge, one of them was disgusting and ROTTEN.

So what does one do when left with four bags of baby carrots, one of which contains gross rotten carrots?  Well, first, one disposes of the bag with the offending veg.  Then one makes carrot cake, following these simple instructions:

1. Let 4 eggs sit at room temperature for 30 minutes, then beat them.
2. Grease two 9" round cake pans, line the bottoms with wax paper, then grease the wax paper.  Unless you are like me and do not own round cake pans.  Or wax paper.  In which case, just Pam the hell out of square cake pans and have a spatula handy.
3. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
4. Mix together 2 cups flour, 2 cups sugar, 2 teaspoons baking powder, 1 teaspoon cinnamon, 1/2 teaspoon salt and 1/2 teaspoon baking soda.
5. In a separate bowl, mix your room temperature beaten eggs, 3 cups finely shredded carrots and 3/4 cup canola oil.  Side note: I highly recommend using big carrots, because shredding three cups worth of baby carrots sucks.  Just ask my fingernails.  You know who appreciated me using baby carrots?  My pets.  The dog got to chase down carrots that jumped out of my hands as they bounced around the kitchen floor and the rabbit got all the nubs.  I'm glad my grated thumbnails were worth their snacky happiness.
6. Add egg mixture to the flour mixture and combine well.  Pour into pans.
7. Bake 30-35 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.  Cool ten minutes in pans, then remove from pans and allow to cool completely before icing.  This is supposed to be done on wire racks.  Again, something I'm missing.  This is where the toaster oven rack and a stove burner came in handy.

Now the icing.  Here's my secret to making this icing, and a number of other things when the directions say to use an electric mixer: I DON'T!  Mwuahahaha TAKE THAT BETTY CROCKER!  I do everything by hand because I care and it tastes better with love.  Mostly it's because I don't own a mixer, nor do I want to spend the money on one (and no, Mother, this is not a hint to get me one for Christmas.  I'm legitimately happy to do it all by hand.  And check out these guns I get from stirring the bejesus out of icing!  LOOK AT THEM!).  But also because I'm secretly an 18th century housewife and they didn't have electric mixers back then.  So there.

1. Let an 8 ounce package of cream cheese and 1/2 cup (one stick) butter soften.  Throw these in a bowl with 2 teaspoons vanilla and mix until smooth and creamy.
2. Add 5 1/2-6 cups powdered sugar a little at a time, mixing well until the icing reaches spreadable consistency.  Make sure to use it at room temperature, because then it's easy enough to spread with a butter knife.  Which you have to do when you don't have an icing spatula.  Let's just say that without an icing spatula and with square cakes, icing is a creative adventure.

When icing a carrot cake, you need to include walnuts.  I like to do a thin layer of icing on the bottom cake, throw in a few handfuls of coarsely chopped walnuts, then ice the bottom of the top cake and sandwich it together.  Then ice the whole outside and top with more chopped nuts.  Et voila!  It may not look delicious but it tastes DAMN good.

Oh, also, I'm just gonna go ahead and close this post by telling y'all that I have made my own powdered sugar.  I'm that much of a badass.  Now I'm gonna go shopping for all the things I don't have in my kitchen--except an electric mixer.

Yankee Baker's School of Witchcraft and Homeopathy

We remember this guy, yes?

The Weber Grill of Death, and how it tried to sear my flesh with a flare up that was likely seen from outer space?

Remember how it scorched my knuckles?  Today's post is about the remedy I used to treat said burn, and pretty much any burn I suffer in the pursuit of delicious.  And it doesn't involve turning to the medicine cabinet--unless you happen to be an 18th century housewife.  Which I happen to be.  In spirit, at least.

I have always had an interest in medical things, my mother being a nurse, and thought semi-seriously about going to medical school (I wanted to become a sports physician so I could become the trainer to the New Jersey Devils and play with boys' groins!  Er, or something helpful and upholding of the Hippocratic Oath...).  Eventually I decided the time and money to be spent on medical school was rather less than appealing, so I chose instead to pursue history.  Along the way I discovered the medicinal aspects of the past and how dang awesome it is to play with plants--especially when it turns out the quacks of ye olde dayes were sometimes spot on!

NERD ALERT

By the 18th century (the period I consider my area of expertise, seeing as how that's where I've spent the last nine years of my life), there are a few approaches to medicine and treating what ailed you.  Most important to note is the approach that didn't yet exist, and that is germ theory.  While an early version of the microscope was around in 1590, it wasn't yet allowing scientists identify germs, much less make the connection between microorganisms and disease.  The folks of the past being a very practical people, they figured a serious disease must be transmitted by something equally large, a la the theory that an elephant on a rampage will cause you serious injury, while an itty bitty mosquito surely couldn't do you any harm.  This is why we call malaria malaria, literally from the Latin, "bad air."  Mosquitoes live in swampy regions (like my neck of the woods where the English first set up permanent quarters in 1607), and swamps give off bad vapours.  The high concentration of this bad air, they conjectured, must be what causes malaria.  Of course now we know it is in fact the protists genus Plasmodium, transmitted by mosquitoes, that does the damage, but we can see already that our colonial brethren weren't too far off the mark in their assessment: they were on to something when the made the connection between marshy areas and malaria, they just didn't have the correct vector.

When it came to treating ailments, 18th century physicians were looking more at individual symptoms rather than diseases as a whole, and had a couple methods to help them with their prescriptions.  First is the notion of temperaments: symptoms were classified as being either dry or wet and hot or cold, and the appropriate treatment would be the opposite so as to counteract the effects of the symptom.  For example, a fever is clearly a hot, dry symptom, so it needs a cool, moist treatment.  These are qualities ascribed to white willow bark, so clearly this is an effective treatment.  And it worked.  For realsies, homeopaths today still prescribe willow bark tea to treat fevers.  Except they do it today knowing that willow bark contains salicylic acid, the main ingredient in aspirin. 

My personal favourite 18th century guide to curing your ills is the doctrine of signatures.  Essentially this boils down to if it looks like what hurts, it'll fix what hurts.  My favourite example of the doctrine of signatures is clove oil.  How many of you have gone to the dentist and had clove oil applied for toothaches (my hand is up--two dry sockets after wisdom tooth extraction)?  There's something in the essential oils of cloves that makes it a marvelous anodyne, and going WAY back to the BC times, folks were chewing on cloves and using clove oil to treat toothaches.  Why?  Because a clove has a crown and a root.  Just like a tooth. 

Of course a lot of remedies were discovered via trial and error or by observing other cultures during the contact periods of the early colonial days.  When the Spanish Jesuits entered Peru in the 17th century, many of them were struck down with the quaternary fever (aka malaria.  I just like throwing out fancy words to you).  The Andean natives had a treatment for it, a tincture made from the bark of the cinchona tree.  And it worked.  The Jesuits brought the bark back to Europe with them to treat cases of malaria, earning the plant the secondary--and easier to pronounce--name of Jesuit bark.  In 1820, the active ingredient of Jesuit bark was isolated and identified: quinine.  To this day, pure quinine remains the sole effective treatment for malaria.  Scientists have attempted to create synthetic versions, but nothing so far has proven as effective.  So drink your gin and tonics, folks, and add a twist of lime to prevent scurvy while you're at it.

Okay, most of this as just been me showing off and revelling in my own nerdiness.  Now we get down to the good stuff: A Receipt for Calendula Paste for the Treatment of Burns, Receipt Being an Archaic Word for "Recipe."

Calendula, or pot marigold, is in fact a member of the marigold family and looks rather like the little fellas you plant in your garden.  The big difference though, is that calendula is the ONLY marigold with medicinal properties, the most significant in the life of this Yankee Baker who occasionally thinks grabbing the handle of a cast iron pot with her bare hands because she can't find the pot hook, is that it treats minor burns (also small cuts and scrapes--should have tested this on my sister as she was going through her awkward phase and came home almost daily with skinned knees from tripping over her own feet).  I have a box full of a variety of dried herbs, some of which may be featured here at later dates, all useful in the treatment of common ailments, including fever, insomnia, cough, sinus congestion, sore throat, headache, and the theme of the day, burns.  What you want to do, if you find yourself with a small burn in the kitchen, or backyard because your grill wants to roast you, is first run the burn under cold water.  No use making a calendula paste if you're still cooking.  Cool the burn sufficiently, then put a few pinches of your dried calendula into a mortar.  Add roughly an equal number of pinches of white sugar and a few drops of water, just enough that you can grind the flower petals and sugar together into a paste.  Shmear the paste over your burns and let it work its magic.  Sometimes I'll slap a Band-Aid over the paste to keep it in place.  The calendula paste will relieve the pain of the burn and also minimise or prevent blistering.  Remember, this is only for MINOR burns.  If you are badly burned, please for the love of sweet baby gee seek professional medical care.

And there you go.  An old timey cure for burns.  Aren't you glad you read this blog?

A Treatise on Eggs

I had intended tonight to make the Motherload of Zuchini Bread, but as I was shredding my 8 cups of zuke (out of only two squash, mind you), it dawned on me that I wanted to bake them in those little disposable aluminum pans which I haven't yet purchased.  I want to do this because I intend to mail a couple of these puppies and freeze the rest and figure the pans will help support the breads, particularly in the mail.  So no aluminum pans on hand, but I figured I could just line my regular pans in foil and just keep the loaves in the foil and do the same.  So the gameplan was still on!  Until I opened my yogurt and realised it smelled funny and had some dark brown ooze pooling on the top.  And since I'd rather not inadvertently kill anyone with my zucchini bread, I decided the baking would have to wait until after I purchased new yogurt (and aluminum pans).

While I was shredding the metric buttload of green gourd, Roommate came into the kitchen and inquired about the mess occupying the counter.  I informed him of the above facts, and the notion of yogurt in zucchini bread intrigued him.  Most zucchini breads, I said, require eggs, but since at the time of the baking of the first breads I had only hard boiled eggs in my fridge, I had to find an eggless alternative.

This got me thinking, in the roundabout way that I do, about eggs and the things I know about eggs that you might not know about eggs.  And so I decided that in lieu of the zucchini bread post (seeing as how there is no zucchini bread), I would post about eggs.  For you.  My loyal reader(s).

Hokay!  So.  Eggs.  You know them, you eat them, you love them.  Fried, scrambled, poached, hard-boiled, soft-boiled, as salad.  The incredible edible egg.  Most of us buy our eggs from the refrigerator section of the supermarket and then store them in our fridges at home.  DID YOU KNOW?  You don't really need to refrigerate eggs!  Well, not the farm fresh kind.  If you get yours from the grocery store, I strongly encourage you do so, and here's why.  Eggs are laid with a protective coating that protects against germs and other icky things from getting in through the microscopic pores in the shell (just like we have pores in our skin).  The trouble is, this coating is initially sticky--it dries quickly upon, er, exit--but while it's still sticky, it can pick up dirt and debris from the place the hen pops it out.  And if supermarkets were to sell these dirty looking eggs in the store, there would be much rioting and picketing in the streets by the masses.  Because obviously if something looks dirty, it is dirty.  Except in the case of eggs.  Protective coating, remember?  But because no one wants to buy and eat icky looking eggs, the commercial egg farms wash their eggs.  Power wash them, in fact.  The eggs are put in pyramid shaped baskets and power washed, which, yes, scrubs your eggs to a shiny white, but also strips the protective coating, leaving the pores exposed.  And the dirty water from the top of the baskets?  Guess where that goes.  Yep.  Into the shells of the eggs at the bottom of the basket.  So we take eggs that are ugly on the outside but safe and healthy on the inside and "wash" them to be pretty on the outside but introduce all kinds of ewie things to the inside (and arguably more important side of the egg).  One of these ewies includes salmonella.  Now not all of these eggs actually contain salmonella and if you keep these pretty on the outside eggs in the fridge and make sure you cook 'em real well, you have nothing to worry about.

If we were to NOT wash our eggs on the farm, or at least not POWER wash them but instead rinse them gently, leaving the protective coating intact, we could actually leave our eggs at room temperature for about 2-3 weeks.  For realsies.  After this 2-3 week time frame, the protective coating on the egg starts to deteriorate, and then you have the problem of open pores and gunk getting in.  BUT.  If we were to give the egg an artificial protective coating--done by coating the eggs in lard (see, bacon really does make the world go round) and packing them in something like sand, buckwheat or more lard (cos why not?)--we can keep our eggs for 3-4 months.  MONTHS!  And refrigerating non-washed eggs also extends their lives, not to months, but many weeks.  More than washed eggs, I can assure you.

Here's another cool thing about eggs: you can test their relative freshness before cracking them open and discovering they are, in fact, rotten and horribly sulfury smelling.  How, you ask?  Hold you horses, I'm about to tell you, I reply.  What you do is you get a vessel like a mixing bowl or pot.  Fill it with water.  Put your eggs in the water.  Observe whether your eggs float or sink.  This is where the magic happens.  Put your science hats on.....now.  When an egg goes bad, it creates methane gas (hence the stinky fart smell when you crack a bad one).  Like a balloon filled with helium, an egg filled with methane will float to the top of your water containing vessel.  A super fresh egg will sink like a stone and lay on its side.  Eggs that stand up or just barely come up off the bottom of the vessel are the ones you want to cook and eat ASAP.  They won't kill you, you just don't want them going more bad.

So there you have it.  Awesome things you probably didn't know about eggs.  Next post, I promise, will be the one about All the Zucchini Bread.  AND I will figure out a way to add pictures, to snazz things up a bit!  Until then, my friends!