At this specific time of year everybody is almost certainly thinking about eggs - the chocolate, Easter egg kind that are customarily sold in bulky cardboard containers and plastic packaging or sometimes wrapped in brightly coloured foil. I've had eggs on my mind most of this year for a very different reason.My 7 year old sons' schoolteacher (who will remain annonymous) evidently spent the whole of his Christmas holidays constructing his own chicken coop in his yard and when back to school in January he decided to share his chicken raising interest with every impressionable boy in group 2a. He doesn't have his own children.
So we've had the chicken coop, a pre-constructed one, I might add, for 5 weeks at this point and we have a mixed-breed family unit of 5 laying hens. A hen lays an average of 300 eggs a year, consequently we also have a great deal of eggs, which is almost certainly why they are uppermost in my mind.
The egg has long been a sign of renewal, the life phase and fertility. Interestingly its' symbolic dominance is rivaled only by that of the cock. It is the capability of the egg to craft a new life that made it so enigmatic to pagan believers. Inhabitants used to believe the earth was shaped like an egg and primitive myths thought the yellow egg yolk, symbolized the sun, which in turn was viewed as a source of life. As eggs symbolize the very meaning of life, they have all through the ages been imbued with magical properties of being able to divine the future.
Traditionally various cultures have their own traditions and beliefs in connection with eggs. In Egypt eggs were hung in the temples to encourage fertility, in Germany farm people used to daub their pitches with egg whilst digging the land, as they believed the egg would help the earth to be more fertile. Some people shunned eating eggs or destroying them at all, for fear of harming productiveness.
As Europe became Christian, eggs became a representation of Easter and the resurrection of Christ. Previously, Christians gave up eggs for Lent, the forty days that Christ was in the wilderness. But even though people didn't eat them, the hens kept laying them! So people would hard-boil and paint them which helped preserve them for a longer time and eat as part of the holiday celebrations. The egg is also part of the Jewish Passover holiday that takes place in the Spring, representing sacrifice and resurrection.
It is hence in the Spring, when all is coming back into life after the winter, that the egg is most closely linked.
In 1996 The International Egg Commission celebrated the first World Egg Day; nations participate every year on the second Friday in October in an global campaign to market the egg and its health benefits.
The entire chicken rearing experience is positive, notwithstanding my original objections to the kids. I'm a very keen cook who likes good, fresh ingredients and we all appreciate the difference in taste we are getting from our eggs. Eggs are so versatile and should be the star of your cooking all year round, adapting your culinary use of them to the time of year.
This year for Easter we're doing something different. We've bought a selection of egg cups to sit our freshly laid eggs in, once the kids have marbled them. We'll wrap them simply in brown paper and provide them as gifts. Nonetheless I won't insult your intelligence by pretending that eggs are any substitute for chocolate!
Happy Easter!
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