Some Frugal Experimentation with Eggs

WINTER PREPARATIONS

With the approach of winter and the long, dark nights, anyone who keeps hens, ducks or quail will be all too aware of the fact that the egg laying diminishes to a virtual standstill, so it's time to make the most of whatever is available before we have no daily supply.

Normally, I'd have access to a proper kitchen to enable me to bake plenty of quiche, make lemon & lime curd and have a stock of meringues, assorted cakes and biscuits in store. However, Thrift Cottage doesn't, yet, have a kitchen, so some alternative storage methods have had to be employed for winter food supplies.

Egg storage is all quite new to me, as where we previously lived enabled me to sell any surplus, but making them last all year round was never given a thought - we simply did without them and made the most of whatever had been cooked up and popped into the freezer beforehand. Now,having read up on it, there seems to be no reason why we shouldn't freeze the eggs for defrosting and cooking when required. So that's what I'm in the process of doing.

Using a silicone muffin tray, I am cracking one duck egg into each section and then open freezing them. It's still at experimentation level for me, as I don't know how these will cook once defrosted, but the freezing seems to be working alright, allowing me to pop out each egg once it's done. They are curious looking 'cakes', that's for sure!

These frozen duck eggs are being bagged up and sealed, so they can be easily accessed individually, depending on how many are called for at any given time. Biscuit baking calls for only one at a time, so this seemed like the obvious solution to a winter egg shortage problem - we can at least have biscuits, cakes, pasta and quiche. That's the plan - I'll update you once I've got to the stage of needing to use any of them. I reckon the sections in the muffin tray will hold either one duck egg, 2 hen eggs or at least 4 quail eggs each.

 

If anyone else already does this, please get in contact and let me know if there's anything special I should know before defrosting and cooking these. In the meantime, wish me luck in my endeavours to keep a supply of garden dwelling poultry produced eggs going until spring, when the birds will, hopefully, all start laying again.

 

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