Eggs, Eggs and more Eggs

I spent all day today cooking with eggs. The girls are doing very well---producing an abundance of eggs, eggs, eggs! I am sure that we had at least 11 or 12 dozen eggs in the fridge, as I have not been working too very hard at keeping up with them. I have already made mucho noodles. We have eggs for breakfast, use them in baking, feed them to the cats (raw or scrambled)... if I drop one while collecting them, the hens automatically get those.

While perusing my cookbooks this morning, looking for recipes, I decided to make Rosy Pickled Eggs, Golden Chiffon Cake and Deviled Eggs. I have made and enjoyed the Rosy Pickled Eggs before-- they are pickled in a solution that includes beet juice and are quite pretty to look at when finished...tasty, too! These will sit in the fridge for a few days before they are ready to eat.

I boiled over three dozen eggs for the Deviled Eggs, which I will take to Mom and Dad's tomorrow. That left me extra to make egg salad for lunch.

Amazingly, I was not hungry for dinner! DH had the pork chops all to himself and then we had the Golden Chiffon Cake for dessert with homemade raspberry preserves warmed and drizzled on top.

As the day is winding down, and I am cleaning up after dessert, I open the fridge and see nothing but Eggs, Eggs, and more EGGS!

Homemade Noodles

My girls are hard at work-- each faithfully popping out a smooth, pastel egg almost every day. I had decided not to sell eggs this year. Even at the $3.00 a dozen that we ended up selling them for in the past, I figured that it was still a not-for-profit venture. These jewels are way too good to sell at a loss when we can find ways to put them to good use right here. I would rather feed them back to our chickens and the cats also love them. Most of them, we will eat in various ways ourselves, and then there is the occasional dozen given away to visiting family and friends.

Today, I pulled out my trusty KitchenAid mixer along with the pasta attachments and made three batches of noodles and hung them to dry in the pantry. I LOVE my pasta machine! I honestly would not make noodles if I did not have this...rarely...probably almost never. But with this I can whip out beautiful homemade noodles in no time at all.

The three batches used up a good 15 or 16 eggs and I used Hodgson Mill unbleached white flour. I have some Bob's Red Mill organic semolina flour which I will use the next time and then I can cook a batch of each up and do a little taste test. I did not realize that semolina flour is higher in gluten than all purpose flour. This is supposed to make for better pasta, but the noodles made from the Hodgson Mill all purpose flour seem to be pretty darn good.
We do not have any known intolerances to gluten, but since many people do, I will still be looking for tasty noodle recipes that are gluten free. I may try to make a small batch from Bob's Red Mill gluten free flour (made with garbanzo beans, fava beans, potatoes, sorghum and tapioca).

It took me two and a half hours to finish up the three batches. By the time that was done, I whipped up a quick dinner: NOODLES (!) with leftover chicken breast, some chicken stock thickened with arrowroot, sliced organic carrots, some of Mom's vidalia onions that I had sauteed and keep handy in the freezer, green peas and all seasoned with sage, parsley, sea salt and black pepper and a little lemon juice for a tasty twang. Yummy homegrown comfort food!