Friday, May 25, 2012

Have You Ever

I am not in the egg selling business, but I do sell eggs. Does that make any sense?

I do not promote my eggs to sell because I have been down that road too many times and it is a pain in the butt trying to get them to people, all for a couple of dollars.

Saying that I do have people ask me if they can buy them. I always answer yes because you never know what other add on sells you can sell them in the future. A dozen eggs today, hot sauce and jerky tomorrow, you get what I'm saying.

Today at work this lady comes up to me out of the blue and asks if I sold eggs. I told her I could if she wanted me to. She asked how my chickens were raised and if they were free ranged. I get this question a lot and my answer is always yes. She then asked me if my eggs were organic. I cannot say that they are because I refuse to pay the money for some lab nerd to come out and test me and then tell me what I already know so I say to the lady that I do not feed chemicals to my birds or plants.
The next question was a first for me. She asked if I pasteurize my eggs before I sell them. Not catching on to what she was asking right away I said, yes all my birds are pasture raised.
"No, I mean pasteurized like milk so I can eat them raw" she corrected me.
 I told the nice lady no and that was the end of our discussion.

If handled and stored correctly there is a 1 and 20,000 chance a egg has harmful bacteria in it. The process is easy by heating up the egg to 135 degrees and then refrigerating it. This will not cook it if done right but I don't understand why you would need to.

After further reading, I found that the professionals say to use pasteurized eggs when making any food where the egg will be raw.
So for all these years my chocolate pies with three inches of meringue on top could have killed me, hu. Go figure.

Am I wrong or is this just another scare tactic so we will buy six dollar a dozen eggs at the health food store?
Or maybe I am just sheltered and have been risking it all this time.

Have you ever used or made Pasteurized eggs?
       

28 comments:

  1. I don't know if I have ever had pasteurized eggs (at least not on purpose), and don't do it myself. I do know, after a year of eating only our own eggs, that I would not eat a raw or undercooked store-bought egg. Ours, though, fresh and clean out of the nest box... I do love me some sunny side up or soft boiled eggs. Yum!

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    1. Rae, I take mine over easy and they have to mine. I ate some store bought at a cafe the other day for breakfast and I swear, they were so bland and nasty.
      I am ruined.

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  2. I've never heard of pasteurized eggs...! Everyone knows eating raw eggs you take a chance - if she wants to eat them pasteurized, perhaps she should get some chickens and produce her own! Surely pasteurizing eggs cooks them??? Or is it just to "clean" the shells?

    Now I've heard everything, I reckon :)

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    1. Dani from what I have been reading it does not cook the egg. You get the water to 145 and then remove the egg. The inside should be around 130 degrees and they say if you take them out of the hot water it will not cook them. Go figure.

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  3. I don't know how you make chocolate meringue pie, but mine have cooked yolks in with the chocolate pudding, and egg whites that are whipped into a high stiff meringue and baked to stabilize it. No raw eggs there. I'd buy your eggs in a minute.

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    1. Trailshome, I know everything is but the meringues and mouses were some of the things listed as having to use the pasteurized eggs.
      Like I said, I think it is a scare tactic.

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  4. ugh. doh! oh man! (i was thinking of leaving the comment at that because i think that stream of words sums up how i feel about the situation. then i remembered the last time i left a short comment and didn't want to do that again. so i will continue).

    first off - it really does take all kinds to make a world. and some of them have to be idiots.

    hmmmmmm....so all of them people out there in the world that eat their own UN-pasteurized eggs straight out of the chicken should have died by now? and you have eaten UN-pasteurized meringue? and lived? you should have your own tv show!!!! you are a scientific miracle, buddy!

    ugh. oh man. jeesh. your friend,
    kymber

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    1. Kimber, that is what the wife calls me, a scientific miracle. I think she uses it in a more derogatory way though.
      Thanks for the longer comment this time.

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    2. buddy - that's kymber with a "y" - yo dude!

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    3. Well, I was in a rush and I did changed it. I had Kumber at first but I changed to Kimber. I think I will stick with that. From now on you will Kimber.

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  5. Thank you for my belly laugh for the day. I laughed so hard I had to read the post to Har-Har so she understood.

    You know people go to loads of extra unnecessary effort all the time because somebody "professional" said so. Some may be valid in the course of it all but much I have found to be a load of who-ha.

    I have to admit though I don't like meringue but I do love a good chocolate pie topped with whip cream. Makes my mouth water thinking about it. - Genevieve

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    1. Genevieve, Anything to make a dollar. Scare the public into wanting to buy higher priced items. Why do you think that all the "healthy" foods are so expensive. If they were really concerned about us being fit and not fat then the junk foods would be what we could not afford.
      I personally wished they would just stay the heck out of it all.

      I also think it is a inner city thing. People will always believe what the news and their high kept neighbor says never knowing the real truth to the matter.

      I am glad you both had the laugh. I actually was concerned that this was a new thing I was going to have to do in order to keep selling eggs. Oh, wait, I'm not in the egg selling business anyway.

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  6. MDR you have eaten farm raised eggs most all your life and you are still here right
    if you are scared of farm eggs you can clean them with a little white vinegar in the water to kill bacteria or if they are too dirty just make sure they are cooked all the way through or feed them to the dogs

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  7. How did our ancestors not drop dead on the spot with all of these lurking issues??? I'd think I'd buy the eggs that haven't been sitting on a grocery store shelf, in a carton being opened and touched by who knows how many people...who knows how old the eggs REALLY are and how the chickens were treated to get that egg laid? I guess if she wanted some good eggs laid by some happy-chicks, she could've taken advantage of a great deal, otherwise, keep buying from corporate America. Augh. Pasteurized eggs? I've never even heard of such a think until now and I hope to never become THAT obsessed; I guess all the pasteurized scare tactics are an even better reason to buy from a local chicken lover!

    Lana

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    1. Lana, You make some real good points.
      Support your local growers is what I always say.

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  8. Thanks for the tips mom.
    By the way, I ain't scared.

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    1. I did not mean that YOU were scared but used the word in general meaning anyone

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  9. People are so germ-a-phobic these days that they are actually getting less nutrition because of it. Take milk for example. Store bought milk is "ultra-pasteurized" and has nothing in it anymore. I have been making cheese for the last year or so and guess what. I can't use store bought milk (not that I do but this is what the recipes say)because there isn't any of the good bacteria in it. Duh! Why bother drinking it then. I guess they just like spending their money on Probiotics or yogurt that has those "good" bacteria in it. Same with eggs. Do you know that back in the days there was a thing called buttered eggs? It was an egg that was freshly pulled out warm from under a hen and had butter rubbed all over the shell. Makes you wonder what other things we are missing out on. I have actually pulled eggs out from under my hens with the customer standing there and slapped them into a carton. If that isn't good enough for them my family will eat them in a second. And BTW. I don't deliver.

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    1. I have not heard of a buttered egg sista,
      The only reason I deliver is because the people who ask me are at work and being I go there every day it is not too much trouble to take a dozen or two. The hard part is when they call in sick or forgot. It really is a pain but you never know who the next big buyer will be.

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  10. i have been raised on raw milk, eggs fresh from the chicken and so forth...and i love lemon meringuepie..and real ice cream, egg custard, and anything else that takes raw eggs to make too....many of the grocery store do have pasteurized eggs for sale and just like the cartons of free range eggs and brown eggs they are expensive..now these items do contain a bit of bacteria and if you happen to be in really poor health with things like diverticulits, stomach ulcers,spastic colon then you probably should not eat these eggs or milk raw...but also bear in mind that alot of people suffer illnesses and diseases because their bodies do not contain enough bacteria of the good kind to kill off the bad stuff...many people have no idea how out of balance their physical bodies are in.

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    1. Ya know Anony I think many of the cancers we get today is because we do not have enough of the good bacteria in our bodies anymore, but I am just a Redneck, what do I know.
      You made some good points there.

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  11. I have never heard of pasteurized eggs. I think it is like a lot of things we get told, it is all to sell you what they want to sell you. I try things myself before I believe anything like that and since I have always just eaten my eggs without pasteurizing them, I know it is fine. I'm sure that someone who studied up on it could find me a couple of cases where unpasteurized eggs have killed someone but I can find you some weekly ones right in my house where they haven't.

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    1. Good point Becky. There is a better chance of us getting killed in a car wreak on the way to work than to die eating real eggs.

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  12. I agree with you MDR - it's a lot of baloney in my book. Maybe if we actually stopped using the antibacterial soap and let the kids play in the dirt (and eat it if they wanted to) there wouldn't be as much sickness. I don't get why she was so worried about eggs. She should be more worried about GMO than pasteurized eggs. Guess her friends told her about this one. Gotta keep up with the Joneses.

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  13. No, we would go to the hen house in the morning, get the eggs and grandma would cookem up then and there. If your birds are free range there is no problem. Its the ones kept, cooped up in a cage laying eggs 24/7 that have the problems.

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  14. I agree Johnathan. I also think it is in how you care for, store and handle them as well.

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