Sunday, June 21, 2009
Good advice The Incredible Inedible Egg
Posted by Chris Chamberlain on Sun, Jun 21, 2009 at 2:04 PM
I buy farm fresh eggs every week or so from a guy who sells them at my office. I know they're farm fresh because every now and again I encounter something that George Carlin described as "not the end of an egg...it's the beginning of a chicken!!" I only pay a buck a dozen for them, so you won't hear a complaint out of me.
Ironically, the fellow who I buy them from used to work for us before a round of lay-offs a couple of years ago. I cannot believe that he drives to a farm in Watertown to pick up eggs and delivers them to me in Donelson for a dollar, but I know that deep down he just enjoys the camaraderie of visiting us and I'm happy to see him.
All of this is to let you know that I have no financial concerns about the dilemma I am about to describe. On the Friday before Memorial Day weekend I cut out of work a few hours early to head up to our cabin in Sewanee. My ex-coworker, let's call him "Billy," (because that's his name) showed up in my office at about 4:00 with two dozen eggs.
Billy extends credit to all of his customers, so despite the fact that I wasn't there, he left the eggs in a Kroger sack in the middle of my desk. When I arrived back at work on Tuesday, there they sat.
They didn't smell bad or look any different, but the egg cartons recycled from many sorts of store brands all had large refrigeration warnings on them. Intellectually, I know that it's warmer than room temperature inside of a chicken and in a hen house, and that in Europe and South America practically nobody refrigerates their eggs. Still, I was leery.
So much so that I didn't do anything with them for a week. They just sat on my credenza while I imagined the bacteria enjoying a salmonella fiesta inside those ivory shells, like the blood orgy from Rosemary's Baby. I even consulted some food experts who also contribute to this blog as to how I should handle the situation. To a (wo)man, the consensus was "They should be fine to eat. But I wouldn't do it personally." Gee, thanks for the enlightenment.
In the end, I allowed procrastination to make the decision for me. I knew Billy would be back the following Friday, and I didn't want him to see that I had wasted two dollars worth of poultry embryos that he had schlepped a hundred miles for me. So during lunchtime, I went out the back door of my office and threw them at the dumpster one at a time. I intentionally left the door shut. I guarantee it was $2.00 worth of fun.
So what would you have done? Was I being overcautious? You know what they say, it only takes one case of projectile vomiting to ruin your entire day.
Comments (12)
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Under no circumstances would I have eaten those eggs--this is the girl who won't leave cheese out for God's sake!
I get my CSA box at about 2:00 every Friday and leave my eggs out until I get home at 6:00, but that is the longest I would go.
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My old CSA people - who were very proud of their eggs and sold to Plumgood for a while - told me that they left theirs out on the counter for days and so I did the same, in a bowl. I did it for years and never had any problem. There was something about how if you refrigerate them and THEN leave them out, you're much more likely to have problems than if you just leave them out in the first place. I can't quite remember all the science details. But I wouldn't do it with supermarket eggs; you have no idea where they've been or how they've been stored.
This is the part where I come in and say something like "Should this not give you enough reason and thought to not eat eggs in the first place?"
I would much rather eat the fresh egg left out a few days than the blue fuzzy beet that got overlooked in the CSA box this week...but that won't give me enough reason and thought to not eat beets in the first place. I think that we should be more worried about salmonella in supposedly safe vegetables than in a farm fresh egg.
This may help:
http://www.oregonlive.com/foodday/index.ssf/2009/01/how_long_can_eggs_sit_in_your.html
Eggs have natural anti-bacterial components that aid in reducing bacterial contamination for at least a week if not longer. Proper cooking is always advised to avoid Salmonella infections. In this case, I would not consume them sunny-side up or over medium but would scramble or hard-boil them.
You guys get vicious over your eggs! As for vegetable contamination, don't forget that comes form animal products used as fertilizer and cross contamination issues!
I'll be damned if I send a guest home with food poisoning. I'm exceedingly careful about cross-contamination in my kitchen, primarily because I live in a climate that is warmer longer during the year than Nashville. As a result, I have antibacterial handwash permanently at my kitchen sink, use Lysol kitchen cleaner regularly on my bamboo chopping boards, don't leave rice or poultry or mayo out very long after cooking or using them, blah blah blah.
I reluctantly stopped adding the de rigueur raw egg to my Caesar salads because of a guest freaking out over possible salmonella. It didn't matter to him that I'd bought the REFRIGERATED eggs that day and that the carton had an expiration date of 26 days from the date of the dinner party.
That having been said, I'd have eaten the Watertown eggs. I'd have taken them home and given them a good rinse in cold water before putting them in the fridge, but not before making a bitchin' Caesar salad to my taste and greedily consuming it all by myself. It's an insult to the chickens and Billy to not have consumed them.
I hear that as long as the eggs aren't rinsed off after being layed, they should be fine for weeks at room temp. Evidently there's something that coats the eggs and they pop out of the chicken. This coating dries creating a great sealant.
I'd be far less concerned about the health risk of eating those eggs than the general nastiness of egging the dumpster. I hope that was just a joke. I'm sure other people didn't want to walk past the funky ass smell and all the vermin drawn to the egg debris. Also, I'm pretty sure publicly 'fessing up to an act of vandalism in a widely read blog is not the wisest idea of all time.
