Have you ever water glassed an egg? My husband pioneered this process in our family, and it allows you to store eggs unrefrigerated for as long as two years.

Here’s what you do. First, get some eggs fresh from the hens that have not been washed (the eggs, that is; it doesn’t matter if the hens have had their version of a bath, which is flopping around in the dirt), because the procedure will only work if the eggs still have that “bloom” that they wear to ease their passage into the world.

Once you have your eggs, you whip up a batch of water and pickling lime, place your eggs into a large glass jar, pour in the water mixture so that all the eggs are covered, put the lid on the jar, and voila! You can just put the jar on the shelf and grab one or two eggs whenever you need them. I am currently working my way through a jar that we put up in January of 2023, and the eggs are still quite tasty. The only thing I noticed is that the yolks are a little bit runny, but where’s the problem with that? I was gonna scramble them anyway.

The only serious catch is that you can’t do this with eggs you buy in the store, on account of the bloom thing. You have to find somebody local who has some hens, or (God forbid) get some hens of your own. For me, having been thoroughly annoyed by chickens as a child, option #1 is the only viable consideration.

And I’m lucky enough to live in a semi-rural area where lots of people have chickens. Our supplier lives outside of Craig and comes to town about once a week. We buy the chicken eggs, and she has been known to throw in a few dozen quail eggs as a bonus. We haven’t tried water glassing those, but I do know that they are about three to one in volume when compared to a chicken egg. They are also cute and speckledy.

But I digress.

Besides being pleased that I can store my eggs in this delightfully retro manner, I also am comforted by knowing that the hens who provided them for me have happy lives. Having learned some years ago what “cage free” really means, i.e, that poor Henrietta Hen has just enough room in her cage to turn around, I have always felt better buying my eggs from not-the-grocery-store. My father, named by us kids as a PhD (Poultry House Director) used to keep his hens in long, low houses with lines of nests built along the walls. The chickens could go into one of these boxes if they chose, to lay and fiercely defend their eggs, but they could also come out and run around. Pa always told us that “a chicken’s only form of recreation is a dust bath, how could I take that away from them?”

So, my friends, my breakfast today consisted of eggs that I don’t feel the need to fret about and toasted homemade sourdough bread with salmonberry jelly. I wonder what the poor folks had.

Now mind you, I’m not making my own bread because I feel sorry for the wheat (although considering that as a child I made feeling sorry for inanimate objects into an art form, it’s not that much of a stretch), but because store bought bread is crazy expensive and is just waiting for me to get it home so it can start sprouting mold. Do the storekeepers find a way to bribe the bread into waiting until after it is sold? I must do some research on that question.

Stay tuned. Maybe by next year we will be growing our own wheat.