The Incredible, Edible Egg

Scrambled eggs and farine, scrambled eggs and toast, scrambled eggs and crackers, fried eggs and farine, boiled eggs, egg salad sandwich, egg salad and bakes, fried egg sandwich, egg drop soup, pancakes, french toast, sweet/fancy fried breads....

Eggs have become a main staple of mine down here.

Did you know eggs didn't need to be in the fridge? I mean, I sorta did, I read Little House on the Prairie and remember wondering, in amazement how they kept their eggs. But it sorta slipped my mind when I got here, and so seeing eggs, out of a carton and out of a chilled area, was weird. We were instructed that eggs would keep, though for a shorter amount of time, obviously, and they recommended you turned your eggs over every couple of days to keep them from going bad as fast.

I remember the day I arrived at site (almost 2 years ago!), I was so oppressed by newness, so wary, so alert. CH left me free reign of their kitchen, though this was before I developed my mad cooking skills. I glimpsed sight of a flat of eggs, and, without any other seasonings except for salt and pepper and water, made scrambled eggs and ate them with ketchup. The familiar taste was an ovular hug of encouragement, of moral sustenance as well as caloric.

The egg is an easy meal to make, you can make it as simple as salt and pepper, or as fancy as onions, garlic, peppers, bagee (spinach), tomatoes and even beef. Jess has this eggs and farine and cheese meal she makes that's pretty darn good, too. (When we have cheese, that is). As long as I have eggs and farine, I know I'd never starve here.

But, what does it take for me to get the eggs?

Sometimes, eggs are available at the main shop in the village, Bryan and Maisie's shop. They have vehicles and drivers for those vehicles, so their stocks are more or less consistently available. When I buy from the shop, I'll buy 6 or 8 at a time, (at $40 an egg, or 20 cents). These eggs are for the entire village to purchase, however, so you want to be a little frugal, or at least realistic when you think about how many you buy, because you don't know when next the shop will get eggs.

Sometimes, I buy directly from Lethem, when I or my roommate happen to go in to shop, or if CH goes in and has room to bring us some. When that happens, I get a whole flat. One flat, 30 eggs ($880), of our very own, to last us until we eat them up, or they go bad, maybe after 2 weeks or so. And what does it mean to procure a flat, purchase it, and purvey it back to K. House?

You gather forth your 30 eggs in the cardboard, egg shaped pallet, then you get the same egg cardboard ontop. You Duct Tape that baby around and over, around and over, several times, to make sure none fall out. Once the vehicle is packed of all other supplies in mass quantities, you put the eggs in, last, on top of a lap, most likely. And you guard it, vigilantly, for the next 2 hours, the next 40 miles, over a riveted, gravel/mud road, through puddles, through streams, over tree stumps. You protect your eggs from happy-go-lucky pit stops upon the road, where everybody's out, in and all about. You finally get to your House, and unload that flat of eggs upon your counter, cut open the tape bindings and sigh in relief and pleasure at the sight of 30, unfractured, brown, spotted eggs.