Of eggs and cheese

Mike and I go to the Ferry Plaza Farmer’s Market in San Francisco every Saturday morning.  There’s a stall that sells cuts of beef and lamb, and – if you get there early enough – advertises farm eggs at the whopping price of $8/dozen.  If you get there much past 10 or 10:30, though, you get nothing because they always sell out.  So Mike and I decided to get up early one day to see what all the fuss was about.  We bought half a dozen eggs from the meat stall and half a dozen “regular” eggs from the egg stall down the other aisle, for comparison.

Tonight neither Mike nor I felt like cooking anything complicated, so we decided to do the egg taste-test.  We had hardboiled eggs, bread, lightly sauteed baby beet greens, and three kinds of cheese from Cowgirl Creamery in the Ferry Plaza.

To my amazement, there was a difference – a considerable difference – between the farm-raised eggs and the “regular” farmer’s market eggs.  The farm eggs had richer color, a softer texture, and a much tastier yolk than the “regular” farmer’s market eggs.  I’m sold on them, even at double or triple the asking price.  (Admittedly, I use less than a dozen eggs per month, so it’s not like the price difference matters that much to my budget.)  I hadn’t realized that eggs could taste so different before – I always figured, eggs are eggs.  Finding out that they’re not is, well, egg-siting.

The cheese was excellent too – a cave aged Gruyere, a medium aged Gouda, and a cinnamon-cardamom-truffle oil scented cheese named Sotto (I think).  I hadn’t appreciated cheese at all until Mike dragged me into Cowgirl Creamery one day – after tasting their yummy cheeses I think I’m now on a quest to taste them all.  Sort of like me and tomato varieties – if you haven’t grown all of them, how are you going to know which is your favorite? (The end result of raising 80+ varieties of tomatoes one year: Sungold cherry tomatoes and dry-farmed Early Girl tomatoes.  The latter, especially the ones from Dirty Girl Farms, are better than anything I can grow at home.  And that is saying a helluvalot.)

Anyway, the cheese was excellent, the eggs were excellent, the beet greens were okay (could have used a bit of garlic and a little less stem left on the greens), the bread was fine.  All in all it was a good meal, albeit a somewhat odd one.  Mike and I are talking about using some of those yummy farm eggs in a souffle.

I have finished threading the loom and am preparing to sley the reed.  I’m also considering learning computer science from an introductory textbook Mike has.  Where I’ll find time for this in between all the cycling, I don’t know, but things have a way of working out.  I’ll trust the process.