Don’t Like Eggs for Breakfast? My Journey to Eating Eggs.

Welcome to Breakfast Week where I’m talking all things healthier (or not) breakfast. First up, let’s talk about eggs. I used to hate eggs. I wasn’t in the “eggs are bad for you” camp, I just did like them. I didn’t grow up eating them very often and had rarely had them prepared in a way a enjoyed.

This didn’t stop me from getting almost a dozen chicken for egg production (say what?). Fast forward to the fall and we’re rolling in the eggs getting almost 2 DOZEN every other day. I learned to make quiche and feed my kids eggs for breakfast, but I still didn’t like eggs myself. And I still had to come up with a zillion ways to use the onslaught of eggs we were getting [side note: homemade eggnog is fantastic!].

Then, it finally happened, I taught myself to like eggs.

The method was very simple: think about the few ways I have enjoyed eggs for breakfast and recreate that. Despite my claims that I hated eggs, I really liked to order omelets when we went out for breakfast. At the time, I felt that was a skill that only restaurant cooks could properly manage, but a few peeks at YouTube and a couple tries later and I was making delicious omelets at home.

But there was a new problem — a fox! We lost all of our chickens and our egg supply vanished.

Now, if you’ve never had chickens, you probably won’t understand that emotional consternation involved when buying eggs. Here I was, drowning in eggs one minute and the next looking at the pathetic offerings on the grocery store shelf at $4+ a dozen. It was painful to pay that much for eggs and what could I do? One round of eggs for breakfast used 6-8 eggs for my family — was I going to start spending $12 a week ($48 a month) on eggs?

And so the love affair with omelets slowed a little. And then, it was delivered another fatal blow when the whole family went dairy-free.

Omelets without cheese? Why bother.

So spring rolls around and I get another batch of baby chicks to start the egg-train rolling again. However, it takes 20 weeks for them to start laying and the absence did not make the heart grow fonder, it became out of sight, out of mind, and off the menu. Again, I didn’t like eggs.

Eggs start piling up on my counters and in the fridge – this time a little slower than before because we had a smaller flock. What an obnoxious pattern – like eggs and have none available, get egg production up and the favorable feeling goes away.

Again, I decided to focus on trying new preparation methods until I liked eggs again. There was a wonderful, but short, window of overlap where I was liking eggs and I had chickens producing them, until a hawk and a fox eliminated the egg producers — yeah this is the reality of rural life, folks.

On to my third and current round of chickens; half of my chicks turned out to be roosters. I feel like I’ve finally broken my habit of disliking eggs, but I’m still having to buy eggs because I only get one dozen a week from my two hens (the roosters are gone, thats another story).

All of this story is really to point out that sometimes you need to work on yourself to make changes. I knew that eggs were one of the most nutrient dense, affordable, quick and easy-to-make, breakfast items I could eat. It offended me that I turned my nose up at them when they have so much to offer.

I made it a priority to change my perception because it would benefit my health.

I have a friend that says she doesn’t like eggs but also wants more breakfast options. I constantly just want to say “suck it up and find a way to like them!” I know, that isn’t the proper empowering nutritionist response, but I can’t help admit that the thought goes through my head each time the topic comes up.

She doesn’t hate eggs, she eats hard boiled eggs every day for lunch. She’s expressed that she wants a different breakfast option but is firm that she is against eggs. A little experimentation could possibly change that and give her another option for breakfast that could help increase her energy levels in the morning — but for now, eggs are a no-go. Maybe I should give her some chickens.

Another friend introduced me to hash browns served with runny yolk eggs. I am a scrambled egg girl, through and through, like you better cook them through and through. But I was willing to try this dish when she served it to me (always be willing to try something new!) and it was awesome. Awesome in ways I didn’t think eggs could be and awesome while overriding my intellectual arguments that runny eggs are really, really wrong.

But, even though I loved the dish, and I’ve even made it at home a few times — my brain fights me on it. I have to convince myself to eat it even though I love it when I am actually eating it. I am sure that if I made that dish every day for a week (or maybe even two weeks) that I would get past my mental aversion. Sometimes our brains are getting in the way when they shouldn’t – which is also why I want my friend to eat eggs for breakfast, I think she’s letting her brain get in the way.

So – how am I enjoying my eggs right now? I still haven’t been cooking omelets – the no-cheese part still puts me off. I’m sticking with my standard scrambled eggs but lately I’m cooking them in a spiced ghee (niter kibbeh) that I made for cooking Ethiopian dishes. It makes for some fantastic scrambled eggs.

I’m tempted to grab some more chickens to increase production but worry it would put me off eggs again. 🙂