Pusheen + eggs (and tinykittenteeth.com) = love

Pusheen, that adorably tubby gray tabby Internet sensation of a cat, has been recreated by Becky and Frank of  TinyKittenTeeth.com.  I love it.

Bad Eggs. Literally.

Taken from CBS.com

(CBS/AP) Michael Foods, a Minnesota-based food company, is recalling more than one million hard-cooked eggs from 34 states, after tests revealed some may be contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes bacteria.

PICTURES: Listeria: 7 key questions answered

Some 15,000 pails of eggs in brine, sold for institutional use, are being recalled, Michael Foods spokeswoman Diane Sparish said in a U.S. Food and Drug Administration written statement.
TheFDA said the eggs were produced at the company's plant in Wakefield, Neb., and were bought by food distributors and manufacturers and not sold directly to retailers. There have been no reports of illness connected to the eggs, the agency said.

The states included in the recall are: Alabama; Arkansas; Arizona; California; Colorado; Florida; Georgia; Iowa; Illinois; Indiana; Kansas; Kentucky; Louisiana; Michigan; Minnesota; Missouri; Mississippi; Montana; North Carolina; North Dakota; Nebraska; New Jersey; Nevada; Ohio; Oklahoma; Oregon; Pennsylvania; South Carolina; Tennessee; Texas; Utah; Washington; Wisconsin; and West Virginia.

Lab testing by a third party revealed that some eggs may have been contaminated and the company determined that a repair project in a packaging room was the likely source of contamination, Sparish said in an email to The Associated Press. She said more than a million eggs were being recalled.
Michael Foods has taken a number of corrective steps to address the issue and prevent recurrence, she said.

Listeria infection, also known as listeriosis, can cause symptoms including fever, diarrhea, muscle aches, headache, stiff neck, confusion, loss of balance, and convulsions. The disease primarily strikes older adults, pregnant women, or people with weakened immune systems. Symptoms can take up to two months to appear.

Listeria from cantaloupes caused an outbreak last year that sickened 146 people across 28 states, HealthPop reported. The CDC declared that outbreak over in December.
The eggs are sold under six brand names: Columbia Valley Farms; GFS; Glenview Farms; Papetti's; Silverbrook; and Wholesome Farms. Here are pictures of these company's egg labels.
Only lot codes immediately preceded by a "1" AND ending in a "W" are affected.

The FDA says a recall of three lot dates was announced on Thursday, January 26, but the recall was expanded today to include additional lot dates as a precautionary measure.

Got questions about the recall? Call Michael Foods at 877-367-3447, Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. - 5 p.m. ET.

6 uses for eggs (besides eating and decorating)

Instructables.com has a great list of 6 unusual uses for eggs: 

1.  Hair care.  Gross?  Very, but eggs, being high in protein, make good conditioning masks.  Take some egg whites, beat them with a whisk till frothy, add a bit of olive oil, put on your hair, leave for 20 minutes, rinse, and voila!  Conditioning.  And, if you want to smell more fresh than freshly laid, add some scented oils to the concoction.   Supposedly this also works for dogs (feeding them scrambled eggs) and skin care (whisk whites or yolks with water and use it as face wash - alternate each night). 

2.  Arts and Crafts Glue.  Egg whites as they dry become very sticky.  or for papier-mâché, egg whites + flour + sugar + a little alum. 

3.  Plant water (from making hard or soft boiled eggs).  let it cool first (obviously), then go ahead!  Shells are full o' calcium, so besides the water, save the shells for composting. 

 4.  Ghetto band-aid and first aid.  From a hard-boiled egg, use the thin membrane between the white and the shell to cover your wound.  Also, if you get a bruise, use a freshly hard-boiled egg to rub over the bruised surface.  The warm pressure dissipates some of the pooling blood. 

5.  Leather cleaner.  Gentry rub hard-boiled egg whites onto leather (supposedly any leather), and wipe off with a damp cloth.  Makes your leather clean and shiny!

6.  Jewelry cleaner (not sterling silver).  From Instructables: "First boil an egg or two, depending on the size of your jewelry. You only need the hardboiled yolk...Break up the yolks a bit, and place at the bottom of a container that you can easily seal. Set a wire rack over the yolks so you can hold your jewelry above without directly touching the yolks. If you don't have a rack, use some paper towels. Place your jewelry in, and seal the container. Let sit for a day (or longer if you want it darker), and wash silver with a bit of soap. Heads up: the yolks will smell pretty nasty after sitting out, so be sure to open your container in a well-ventilated area."  There you go.

Aren't eggs awesome?  I'm not sure if I would do some of these...but hey!  Who knows?

au naturel ROY G BIV

No, I'm not talking about dying eggs different colors.  We're talking naturally occurring color variation.

So, why do we have brown, white, speckled, blue, etc colored eggs?

According to the Royal Alberta Museum,

- essentially there are three main pigment colors (similar to what makes blood red).  One ranges from yellow to reds to browns, the other two blues and greens.  Different amounts of each pigmentation creates variation in violets and other colors.

- the colors come from the cells in the oviduct walls, as the eggs pass through.

- timing also impacts the markings on an egg: if an egg is not moving, then you get the spots.  if an egg is moving while pigment is being applied, you see the streaking effects. 

Genetics also play an amazing role in egg pigmentation: robins lay blue eggs, but sometimes they might have little spots.  Cuckoo birds are actually able to mimic eggs of other birds so they are cared for.  A-may-zing!

Eggs: Good or Evil?

Are eggs good for you, or are they delectable time bombs of the heart?  If you look online, it's incredibly difficult to find unbiased information on anything, and unfortunately eggs and health is another topic that is ridden with an agenda.  sigh. 

SO dear reader, I decided to try to find at least a semblance of something as non-biased as possible.  What did I find, you may ask?  Two articles.  

1. The first is from my hometown hero, The Mayo Clinic.  Mayo Clinic - famous for the typical health stuff, like cancer, unusual diseases, face-eating tumors....just a few things here and there.  Anyway, according to cardiologist, Dr. Thomas Behrenbeck:

"Chicken eggs are high in cholesterol, and a diet high in cholesterol can contribute to high blood cholesterol levels. However, how much the cholesterol in your diet can increase your blood cholesterol varies from person to person."

Essentially, a normal, healthy person should consume no more than 300 mg of cholesterol a day.  One chicken egg yolk  has about 213 mg. If you have issues with cholesterol, just consume the white, since it has none. 

awesome drawing by Little Black Design

2. HOWEVER, enter article #2 from livestrong.com and the Lance Armstrong Foundation.  You know, the guy that is famous for riding bikes really well, dating Sheryl Crow, and having testicular cancer and bringing global awareness to it via cheap yellow bracelets.  Anyway, according to them:

 "Nutritionists now recognize three different kinds of cholesterol. One of these, HDL cholesterol, is actually good for circulatory health. Hard-boiled eggs long were on the "bad food" list because of their cholesterol count, but it turns out that some of the fats in hard-boiled eggs are actually heart healthy."

Some aspects of eggs are good, some not so good. While eggs themselves have cholesterol, it does not necessarily become bad cholesterol in our blood once ingested, but actually helps promote good cholesterol via good unsaturated fats.

However, the article also says that it's not "the best" source of good heart health (obviously, it still has some bad saturated fats and contains about 71% of our daily cholesterol intake).  

The real answer, just like EVERYTHING, is to just exercise moderation.  

Evolution: egg to live birth in lizards

Oh evolution, oh science, how I love thee. 

Please Creationists/Intelligent Design "scientists", please explain this: how a reptile, something that has always been an egg layer (due to the lack of an internal placenta - thus the use of yolk and egg), is now giving live births?  

Check out this incredibly fascinating article from National Geographic about how the yellow-bellied three-toed skink is moving away from eggs to live births?  

See those weird light colored shapes inside its body?  Yeah, those are its "eggs".  Amazing stuff.  BLESSED BE SCIENCE! 

Screw dying...

as in Easter egg dying. 

Forostyuk Inna, a Ukranian artist, did these mind blowing cross-stitches instead.  No idea how, but if you scroll down to the comment section, there are some decent "maybe" suggestions. 

Another egg artist is retired Slovenian electrician, Franc Grom, who painstakingly pokes as many as 17,000 holes into goose eggs using an electrical drill to replicate traditional Slovenian designs.  Holey awesome! (haaaaaaa.....)

Seriously, amazing stuff.

"What?? No egg fanatic sites??"

Perhaps I just did not do a sufficient enough search for proper egg fan sites. Or perhaps I am the only one that thinks eggs are the ideal synthesis of naturally occurring beauty, are scientifically fascinating, and are absolutely delicious?






I strongly doubt this.



That is why, dear reader, I have created this oddball blog: to share my love of eggs with the rest of the world. I know I am not alone, that there are other "ovofeliacs" out there. So, whether you are fascinated by the shape of eggs, the biological aspect of eggs, eggs used in art, or eggs used in global recipes, I welcome you to my new blog and hope you will get as much joy out of it as I hopefully will.