Day 3 - The Kitten or the Egg?

While I've been waiting patiently for my order of wheat to come in from Huasana Valley Farms (see order form here if you're interested) apart from produce I have had little.  I roasted a whole chicken for dinner the other night in some local olive oil, lemon, rosemary, and honey and I also had oysters and mussels harvested just off shore for another feast.  While delicious, not exactly on the budget for an every day type of meal. 

For the next 28 days protein is going to be cheapest in the form of farm fresh eggs, and I've eaten a lot of these already.  My aunt and uncle have a few backyard chickens at their home in Santa Maria, and have more than enough to share - and they generously do so.  These are a score because a) they're free! and b) they're 0 miles of transport since my aunt travels (with eggs) down to Santa Barbara twice a week for work and delivers them to me when she does.

We'd like to get some chickens of our own soon.  Eggs can go a long way for different recipes and as far as pets go, I don't think chickens are too bad.  Our cat Kitty, however, doesn't lay anything but around the house.  I've discussed this with her and she doesn't seem to care.


This is Kitty not caring.

After thinking long and hard on other non-produce dishes I could use eggs with (besides making bread), I've decided on trying to make mayonnaise.  Mayo is simple because it only requires a few ingredients (all of which I can source locally), and will be great for making veggie sandwiches once I have my bread completed.

I found this great posting on About.com on making mayo.  I like this recipe in particular because it tells and shows you how to make single-egg mayo, for people not wanting large batches.  When making homemade mayonnaise you are not using the preservatives that mass-manufactured mayonnaise does, so it can go bad rather quickly (keeps for a few days).  Because of this, small batches will work best for me.

I also like this recipe because it shows you how to make mayonnaise without a KitchenAid and I like recipes that don't require expensive cooking equipment (see more of my frustration on this when I write about baking bread).

I noticed in this article, however, that they mentioned something about using pasteurized eggs, which mine will not be.  The author writes, "...an important thing to remember is that since these egg yolks aren't being cooked, for safety reasons you should always use pasteurized eggs when making mayonnaise at home". 

This got me thinking.... what, exactly, do large egg producers do to eggs to get them pasteurized?  The sum of it is that pateurization means heating the egg to 140 degrees in order to kill bacteria such as salmonella, in mass production this means a series of hot water baths that don't end up cooking the egg.  If you enjoy being thoroughly confused Here is a wikipedia article about the process.  I also found an article on how to home-pasteurize your eggs in the microwave, which seemed extremely complicated.

Conpiracy theorist at heart, I'm wondering if this is totally necessary, and how the safety of eating eggs from our own backyard actually matches up to the safety of eating eggs all produced in one large facility (think recent egg snafu this summer with 1,600 illnesses).  I'll take the risk.

What I ate:

• Egg (0) Omelette with backyard avocado (0) and backyard tomato (0), cilantro from CSA (10), and olive oil (34 - counted yesterday)
• Pistachios (64 - counted yesterday)
• Peach from Lompoc (54 - counted yesterday)
• SYV Wine (45)

Todays Total Miles: 207
Grand Total: 538