We have backyard chickens. They have a lovely coop and plenty of penned-in space, but we usually let them free range as they like and they return to the coop every night. They are not so happy when it is 0 degrees and everything is ice, then they tend to stay in their coop, but overall they are happy wandering chickens. I might consider just keeping them as amusing little pets, but the dears gift us eggs. Lots of eggs. We sell enough to break even on our feed and shavings cost. We donate some to the senior meal site and/or the food shelf. And we use eggs to bake with, make breakfast sandwiches, and eat a lot of hard boiled eggs. This is all wonderful, but like most chicken owners we have occasionally gotten sick of the usual recipes and gone looking for more. And here are some gems that we have found:
- Breakfast every day, maybe multiple times a day. We even prepare and freeze breakfast english muffin sandwiches and breakfast burritos and freeze them for days we are in a rush. I have frozen omelets too, and brought them to work to heat up for lunch, but honestly these are so much better fresh than frozen. It is a healthy meal, but a little bit sad.
- French toast and french toast sticks. These are also good to freeze to snack on later. I made breakfast for dinner tonight, making and freezing the leftovers of pancakes, waffles, and plenty of french toast. The french toast uses plenty of eggs, and a little vanilla, nutmeg, and cinnamon so that not so much syrup is needed.
- Quiche – this is so versatile. I cheat sometimes and pie a pre-made pie crust that just needs to be unrolled. Then scramble my eggs and pour into the pie shell. Then add in whatever chopped up yumminess I feel like from ham to broccoli, to even some shredded carrot. Then I sprinkle the top with cheese: either mozzarella or cheddar depending upon what I have on hand. (full disclosure, this is a stock photo, my quiche has never been so pretty!)
- Meringue cookies – I’m not sure how long these can last in an air-tight container. I’ve read that after about five days they start to get a strange chewy texture, but they never last that long with us so they stay light and crispy through at least four days!
- Pies with meringue – I don’t make many pies, but I do love a good lemon meringue or key lime pie…
The one recipe that we really don’t recommend was egg crisps. We tried both baking and dehydrating the whites, mixed with garlic powder and salt, as a chip substitute. They sounded good, but they just weren’t. We would rather just eat scrambled eggs.
What are your go-to recipes for when you get a surplus?
#secontimearoundhomestead
I’d never heard of egg chips before and I can’t really picture how that’d work in my head. French toast is nice, but I prefer eggy bread as that’s what I grow up eating, because we were really poor
Oooh, egg bread, yup.
I found the chip recipe whenI was hunting for new recipes. As I recall I gave most of them to the chickens. We certainly didn’t eat them.
I love quiche! Quiche Lorraine is my favourite 🙂
I wish my kids liked it as much as me!
Yum!! I wish I had extra eggs, I ran out a few days ago and haven’t made it to the grocery store! Dreaming of hard boiled eggs haha lovely ideas!
Thank you! I have plenty of eggs, but this is the third day in a row I haven’t found time to hardboil eggs. I’m down to my last two!
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Thanks! I hope you have found it useful!