Anti-Ants

Just a quick note to share with anyone with ant invasions due to the cold weather or rains.  Dealing with ants when you have small children or pets can be more challenging as you don't want to leave out ant baits or any poisons where the kids or pets might reach.  You also don't want to use spray poisons.  Two things that have worked for me are: dish soap and cinnamon. 

With the dish soap, put a few drops in clean spray bottle (I use Dawn), add water to fill bottle and gentle swirl to mix.  Use that to spray on the ants wherever you see them.  The soap in the water kills the ant or at least stops them in their tracks so that you can wipe them away with a paper towel.  (You can feel good about the fact that you are also cleaning the soap at the same time.)  The soap also wipes out the scent trail that ants leave behind them that tell their fellow ants where to follow.

With the cinnamon, sprinkle liberally at any entry points if you can discover where the ants are entering your home.  Within a day, all the ants will stop coming in.  The bonus is that cinnamon smells great, much better than any ant spray.  Most importantly, cinnamon is safe to use around pets and kids.  Even if they do taste the stuff, at least it's not poisonous.

The Great Eggsperiment

My kids don't like to eat eggs, and in fact, my son J is allergic to eggs.  As for me, I enjoy eggs over easy or sunny side up for my breakfast on Saturdays, the one day of the week that breakfast is not rushed.  I just love putting it on toast to soak up all that lovely yellow yolk.  Add a little bit of salt on the eggs, a nice cup of hot coffee on the side, and I am in breakfast nirvana.  Of course these days, with all the salmonella outbreaks, it is considered risky to eat eggs prepared that way.  The FDA recommends cooking all eggs until both the whites and yolks are firm.  I don't like hard egg yolks.  I am not a big fan of scrambled eggs.  Ceasar salad just doesn't taste the same with out the yolk in the dressing either.  So I guess I am rolling the dice each time I enjoy my over easy eggs.  Yep, that's me living dangerously.  On the edge.

All these reports of bad eggs, egg recalls, poor conditions for hens etc., have spurred a growing backyard hen-house movement.  It used to be something that was rather unusual -- something you see only Martha Stewart doing on her Connecticut farm.  Lately, I have read several local news articles about people having hens as pets and egg producers in their urban and suburban backyards.  Last week, one article featured a family in nearby Alamo who have now decided to go into business selling their fresh eggs.  Even my daughter's elementary school has egg-laying chickens next to their school garden.

My neighbor S is one of many local homeowners with her own chickens.  She has 10 hens.  Her three kids raised the chicks as pets, spending time with them every day and putting them on their laps like cats.  Each hen has a name and distinct personality.  They are very tame.  (Except for one called "Crazy Girl" who somehow didn't get as much attention as the other hens.  She's like the foster child that somehow fell through the cracks.  She didn't get as much love and it apparently shows.)  My kids love to visit and pet the chickens.

Last month, S and her family were out of town for a week.  She set up a rotation with friends to feed her chickens and collect the freshly laid eggs.  Her 10 hens lay about 6 to 8 eggs per day.  Each friend had a 2 day slot.  This was a great opportunity to try fresh eggs and to know where they came from.  I could enjoy my over-easy eggs without fear.  My top question though, was do fresh eggs taste better than store bought eggs?

Each person to whom I posed the question assured me that fresh eggs do taste better, but when asked to describe how, they were unable to put it into words.   So I was full of anticipation and curiousity when my turn came to feed the chickens and collect the eggs. 

On the first day, we collected these eight eggs.  Although the photograph doesn't show it, the none of the eggs were white.  Three were sort of a green-blue-grey color, while the rest were tan or brown.

The only day that I have the time to actually cook eggs for breakfast is on Saturday.  So we had to wait a few days before we could enjoy the fresh eggs.  How did they taste?  I scrambled two for my husband B, and had a couple over easy for myself.  Our conclusion was...

... they taste like eggs.  Perhaps because of the great anticipation, I was expecting something earth-shakingly different.  Neither of us noticed anything different.  Our impression was that they were good eggs, but just eggs.  How deflating.  I guess I was expecting some sort of egg-epiphany.

The following weekend, I decided to be a little more scientific in my approach.  I cooked one store bought egg and one fresh egg.  Upon a side-by-side comparison, I finally got it.  Next to the fresh egg, the store bought egg was decidedly bland tasting.  I was surprised that there was a marked difference.  The fresh egg still tasted like I expected a good egg to taste.  Next to the fresh egg, the store bought egg tasted like cardboard. 

I guess it is like pizza.  If you regularly ate Domino's pizza, you would not think much about the taste of the pizza.  It would be pizza.  If you later have a slice of Blondie's pizza, you would just think it is a good pizza such as you would expect a pizza to taste like.  If you had a Blondie's and a Domino's side-by-side, then you would really notice the difference.  If you were accustomed to having Blondie's regularly and then tried a Domino's pizza, you would conclude the Domino's is bland and tasteless.  If you never had Blondie's, you would not know what you were missing.

So with the eggs.  The fresh eggs are probably more nutritious.  I now know they are more flavorful.  They are probably more safe to eat over easy or in ceasar salad dressings.  Maybe some day when my kids are older and require less of my focus, I will consider having my own chickens.  But as for me right now, I guess I will have to stick with my bland-risky-store bought eggs.  Unless my neighbor decides to go out of town and wants us to feed her chickens. ;-)