Golden Breakfast

My kind of color coordination:
Eggs, cheese, honey, orange juice, butter, cornbread.

I have discovered breakfast.

First I discovered eggs, or what eggs should be. It turns out that what you put into an animal affects what comes out of it. Exercise matters too. When a chicken sits still and eats the cheapest food possible, the cheapest eggs possible come out. Those eggs are what you generally find in the supermarket.

Enter pastured eggs. Chickens are given freedom to move around. They eat healthy food, and have freedom to peck at bugs and what-have-you.

Does the result make a difference? Well, is there a difference between the following shades?

Those shades come from a photo I took of a pastured egg yolk with a supermarket egg yolk. The deep orange on top represents the pastured egg. I think it a safe assumption that the difference in color corresponds to a difference of nutrient content.

That's not the only difference. I was startled the first time I sought to scramble one of these yolks, because I could actually feel it give back when I pushed on it.

Let me tell you, the flavor speaks volumes more.

Back to breakfast. My housemate and his wife start every day with a spinach and cheese omelet. Culturally this seemed a bit extravagant, so I asked why. They said that, among other reasons, a higher-protein breakfast leaves them fuller longer and helps them have a healthier appetite through the day.

I tried it out, and my experience confirms their words. My old diet of a simple bowl of cereal left me hungry as few as two hours later, while after eating just two eggs with some toast I felt quite full for that same amount of time and not actually hungry for considerably longer.

Those reasons aside, that breakfast is delicious! Taking some time in the morning to treasure cooking and eating is a wonderful ritual. Prizing such luxuries as beauty and flavor and aroma really starts the day off on a good foot.

After all, what you put into an animal affects what you get out of it. If I want to be productive through the day I think I do well to invest time and money and thought into my fuel.