Preserving Eggs: A Six-Month Update

My mission at Mezzacello is to Grow, Maintain, Sustain, and Explain. This blog post aims to do all of that at once. If you are looking for details on how to get started preserving eggs, see more here. It’s important to me that food, water, energy, and even waste not be wasted. I know we are a wasteful society. I try but even I have limits.it used to annoy me to no end when fresh eggs would go bad after sitting for two months. I hated throwing them out, or processing them into the wormery, or grinding the shells into the topsoil. One of the best ways to check for the freshness of an egg is to see if it floats. If it does not immediately sink to the bottom of a bucket of water, then it has air or gas inside it. If the egg has air or gas inside it, then the shell has lost integrity and bacteria have begun feasting on the interior contents, creating CO2. The beauty of preserving eggs in this fashion is that it is IMMEDIATELY obvious if an egg goes bad; note that all of these eggs are on the bottom of the bucket.[media-credit id=3 align="alignnone" width="300"]This system was introduced to me by an Amish man at a farmers market here in Columbus. The physics, chemistry, and biology is quite straightforward. The eggs MUST be clean and fresh. They must also have a natural bio bloom (so do not wash them) the distilled water keeps foreign chemicals and solutions out of the egg and preserves the freshness. The molecular lime bonds with the calcium on the shell and then the two create a strong bond to protect the egg’s contents. So far it works like a charm!If you are curious about the color, the tan and buff eggs are chicken eggs, the white eggs are duck eggs. These keep beautifully. Just as fresh as the day they were hatched. Now my eggs never go to waste. Now when a family comes to me in crisis, I have reserves. Maintain and Sustain indeed!