The above picture is our Sunday breakfast: homemade bacon, fresh-baked buttermilk biscuits, and scrambled eggs from our own chickens.

Having chickens is great, so far. The eggs are smaller than the ones you get at the grocery store, but it’s not exaggeration to say that they are the best eggs I’ve ever eaten. I don’t even have to add salt when I cook them. I like to fry them over-medium and eat them with toast, or poach them for a bistro salad. I haven’t tried baking with them yet, but I’ll be making ice cream with them in the near future.

Having my own eggs has coincided with the 550 million egg recall. As you probably know, these eggs had to be taken off the market because they could be contaminated with salmonella. That is pretty scary. Even scarier are the filthy conditions of the chicken farms that produced these eggs, which according to the above article include:

•Barns with dozens of holes chewed by rodents that mice, insects and wild birds used to enter and live inside the barns;

•Flies on and around the egg belts and hen feeders;

•Manure built up in 4- to 8-foot-tall piles in pits below the hen houses, in such quantities that it pushed pit doors open, allowing rodents and other wild animals access to hen houses;

•Dozens of hens, which had escaped their cages, roaming freely, tracking manure from the pit to other caged parts of the barns;

•Hen houses with significant structural damage and improper air ventilation systems.

This is on top of the questionable practices of many egg operations, which some people consider animal abuse. Chickens are shoved together in cages so small, they sometimes can’t stand up or move their wings. On top of that, they are often shot with antibiotics, hormones, and other drugs that you and I then ingest.

Contrast that to my hens, which are totally pampered–a real farmer would find it ridiculous how pampered my hens are. They have giant cages, they get to roam around the yard, and they get tons of treats and attention. They are my pets as well as my little egg machines.

The point is, I haven’t had to worry about the egg recall at all. And I’m starting to see another benefit to growing your own food, besides increased quality and saving money. It reminds me of the e. coli outbreak in Spinach that happened in 2006. Everyone was upset because they couldn’t eat spinach, but I grew my own, so I didn’t have to go without spinach and I didn’t have to worry about e. coli, either. Earlier this year, there was a basil shortage, but I grow my own, so I have more than I know what to do with. The price of beer is going up like crazy, but my husband makes excellent beer that costs under $1 a bottle.

Sometimes our food system seems rather unstable, which is why it’s great to have your own source of food. I am not that extreme about it. I’m not about to, say, grow my own wheat for my buttermilk biscuits. But it’s still nice to have the peace of mind when you sit down to breakfast that you know exactly where your food came from, and what went into it.

I bought 10 quail eggs for $1.29 at Whole Foods the other day. I had never cooked with them before, although I’ve had them a few times in restaurants.

I was a little nervous playing with them because I had recently tried some duck eggs and didn’t like them. The duck eggs were a lot like chicken eggs only more gamy–they would be okay to cook with, but not very tasty by themselves.

But quail eggs, I was relieved to find, are different. They are maybe even a little better tasting than chicken eggs, plus they are adorable. I decided to poach them and put them in a bistro salad for dinner.

I poached three quail eggs in balsamic vinegar and put it on a bed of fresh figs, croûtons, Gorgonzola cheese, and red leaf lettuce that had been tossed with the same balsamic vinegar and olive oil.

It was yummy. The only thing I would do differently is to use a better kind of lettuce next time–maybe arugula?

I also tried the quail eggs in this recipe, only I tweaked a bit, using lentils instead adzuki beans and regular olive oil instead of pumpkin seed oil. It was yummy.

So, verdict: I like quail eggs.

While the Bistro Salad isn’t my favorite salad of all time, it is surely my favorite to make. I keep making them for lunch over and over again. It’s a salad dressed in vinegar and topped with a poached egg. When you’re eating it, the egg yolk mixes with the vinegar and makes its own creamy dressing for the salad. It’s kind of a mixture between breakfast and lunch, and the addition of the egg to the salad is both easy and feels fancy. Plus the whole thing is low in calories. Here’s a recipe:

Bistro Salad

Ingredients:

2 Eggs
Vinegar
Olive oil
Lettuce
Carrots
Croûtons
Cheese (I used a soft cream cheese broken off in chunks, but any cheese will do)
Salt/pepper

Directions:

1. First, poach the eggs. Get a frying pan and fill it with water. Add about 2 Tbs of vinegar to the water. Heat it until it is simmering, but not boiling.

2. Carefully slide two eggs into the water. I do this by loading each egg into a tea cup and then sliding them carefully into the water. Let your eggs poach for about 4-6 minutes. Be careful not to boil them.

3. While the eggs are poaching, make the salad. Add lettuce, carrots, croûtons, and a little bit of cheese to the bowl. Mix the salad with the same vinegar you put in the poaching water. I used rice vinegar. Drizzle with just a touch of olive oil–remember, the eggs will make the dressing, so you don’t need much other fat. Add salt and pepper.

4. When your eggs are poached, the whites should be firm with some wobbling in the middle from the loose yolk. Pull them out of the water with a slotted spoon. Hold over the pan for a moment to let excess water drain off and then slide them on top of the salad, like so:

(Yes, this is the same salad from my croûton post.)

I kept this particular Bistro Salad pretty simple, but I often add other ingredients. For example, you might add:

Bacon
Fresh tomatoes
Baby celery
Almonds
Fresh mozzarella balls
Radishes
Etc!

The key is to keep it fairly simple so that the egg remains the star of the dish. Even if you aren’t a fan of runny yolks, this dish might change your mind.