There is nothing like a fresh egg that refreshes you in the morning on the lazy weekend. After a hard week’s work, I like to give myself rewards of sleeping in and nice breakfast. I recently bought hens to raise in my backyard. They are my fresh egg suppliers. I was surprised how social hens were when I got them. Hens are very cute companion animal as pets. I feed them kitchen scraps to reduce landfill, they love to eat almost everything I want them to eat (including weeds in my garden). Things I was told not to feed are avocados, potato peelings, tea leaves, coffee grounds, rhubarb leaves, soap, salt or salted products. What hens cannot eat goes in my compost bin. Their droppings and housing material (straw) are also added to the compost bin. They are great fertilizers for my garden too. I’m very happy about the benefits.
As I learned about hens, I also learned about their eggs. There are a lots of things I didn’t know about.
Hen’s eggs have natural coat on the shell to protect its content from bacteria. The coat gets washed off when wet. So, if you find dirt on the shell, wipe off with dry materials such as kitchen paper or tea towel. Use fine sandpaper if you need more. Washing eggs in the water is not recommended unless you cook them straight away.
Storing eggs in the fridge helps to suppress building up bacteria. Don’t keep them in the room temperature if you can.
It is a good idea to write date on the egg shell (with non toxic pen) to indicate how old the eggs are. Older eggs are good for some recipes. (More on that next.)
Fresh Eggs
The easiest way to tell the freshness of eggs (when not marked with date) is by floating them in the water. - but remember about the coating on the shell. Do this just before using them.
Very fresh eggs sink in the water - they are good to eat even raw!
Older eggs stand in the water: a part of the shell float above the water - they are still good especially for making meringue pie, yummy!
Too old eggs float in the water: almost half of the shell or more float above the water - don’t use it, don’t even crack it.
Boiled Eggs
The very fresh eggs can be tricky to peel the shells when boiled. Older eggs peels better for some reason. If your store-bought eggs peel really good, that can be an indication of not so fresh eggs. Use older eggs for boiling and fresh ones for something else. My grandma’s trick is leaving the eggs at room temperature just before boiling and cool them under cold running water just after boiling. This works fine to make them easily peeled. Some salt added in the boiling water prevents egg cracking and exploding when it does. If you want to make the perfect boiled eggs, this little tool can help. Egg perfect. Just insert this in the water with your eggs. This tells you how well your eggs are cooked. If your family members have different preferences for softness of boiled eggs, you can satisfy them all in one go with this tool. I’ve using this and working great!
How to find boiled eggs from raw eggs
There is a way to tell boiled eggs from raw eggs without cracking them. Place an egg lengthwise on a flat table, then spin it. The boiled eggs spin nicely balanced whereas raw eggs don’t. This is because raw eggs have yolks moving around in the shell as they spin, that makes it unbalanced, slow and difficult to spin.
Anyway, it’s time to check my hens if they laid eggs for me today. Have a happy breakfast, see you then 
... I appreciate your support.
