Rosie's Got Ova!

We have friends

who recently purchased a quite impressive Chicken Condominium and bought a bunch of different types of chickens. We are now enjoying the bounty of their efforts, or rather their chickens' efforts. Look at the size of the back row far right egg. That's the biggest egg I've ever seen.

Now, I didn't hear the exact conversation between the corporate execs at B & D Chickens R Us but, as relayed to me by Mr. Hawthorne, I imagine it might have gone something like this: Wife of chicken owner to chicken owner: Aren't you going to clean the eggs? Chicken owner to wife: No, you're s'posed to leave that on. It's a protective coating.

Me to Mr. Hawthorne: So it's a protective coating of chicken shit?

Mr. Hawthorne: That would be correct.

Big thank you's to the kind folks at B & D Chickens R Us.

I appreciate the eggs so very much. Mr. Hawthorne made me coffee, toast with butter and sourwood honey, and your eggs, cooked over easy, this morning. I think those eggs might have been the best I've ever eaten. ETA: This just in. A comment from my dear friend, Marion. Rosie, one of my oldest and favoritist cookbooks quotes an Irish cookbook that specifically states you should rub UNWASHED eggs with butter and store narrow end down in your cool larder...supposedly, 'superb'. Thanks, Marion. Now somebody tell me what the coating of butter does.