Let's talk about eggs + Easy Mayonnaise

Mayo-naise. I love it. I could eat it by the spoonful.

Now, since mayonnaise is made up of so few ingredients (eggs and oil, and seasonings), I would say it's pretty important that those ingredients be of fantastic quality!

Books could be written on eggs and oil alone, so we'll just concentrate on eggs for today. Read about oil here! In the meantime, just promise me you'll never ever use canola oil ever again.

Eggs from happy, healthy chickens that are allowed to eat the right food and have space to live, are (obviously) healthier for us! Their omega-3's and omega-6's are balanced, instead of commercial eggs, which have ratios of omega-6 that are way too high (too many omega-6's and not enough omega-3's cause cancer and other inflammatory disease). With healthy eggs, there is hardly any reason to worry about salmonella! Buying eggs from a small farm instead of at the grocery store probably means they weren't washed with harmful chemicals, which strip eggs' natural protection (in many other countries they don't refrigerate their eggs because they leave in tact this natural protective layer).

There are so many terms that marketers use to make eggs sound better than they really are. Don't fall for them! The only eggs that you should be eating will have the words "PASTURE RAISED" on the box. "Cage free", "Free Range", and "Vegetarian Fed" might sound good, but are very misleading.

"Cage free" only means that the chickens were not in cages. They can still be confined in very close quarters inside a building where they are standing in their own feces and can barely move. They have little or no access to the outdoors.
"Free Range" means that the chickens were allowed “access” to the outside. So unfortunately, this means that chickens are crammed in large warehouses that have a small door on one end that opens to a few feet of outside dirt space. Most of the chickens never even know that door exists and couldn’t get there even if they wanted to.
"Vegetarian Fed", is the most misleading. Chickens, being carnivores, need access to bugs and insects. When they are "vegetarian fed", they were raised completely on industrialized feed (probably GMO) and NEVER allowed outside. Yucky (and sad).

"Pasture Raised" means exactly that. Chickens live outdoors with freedom to walk around, dig for insects, bask in the sun, and lay eggs that reflect their balanced lives. We are what we eat, right? So are chickens, and if we are going to eat their eggs, we better hope they were healthy and happy. If you compare a pastured egg yolk to a commercial egg yolk, you'll notice the healthy chicken's egg yolk is much brighter yellow, sometimes even orange. This reflects the chicken's nutrition! Pasture eggs have two-thirds more vitamin A, twice as many omega-3 fats, three times as much vitamin E and seven times more beta carotene!!

So, in short, buy eggs at your local farmer's market. Ask the farmer what their chickens eat. Ask if they use chemicals to clean their eggs. You might even try searching on craigslist for fresh eggs from people who have backyard chickens and can't eat all their eggs. It's worth it. Yes, you'll pay $6 or $7 instead of $3 for the "organic" eggs at the store (or the $1.50 on the ones with no fancy words - don't), but think of those extra few dollars as saving you SO MUCH future money on healthcare. Chemotherapy is pretty pricey, from what I hear.

I find it very interesting to read the label of the "best" mayonnaise on the market:

"America's #1 Mayonnaise is made with real*, simple ingredients: eggs, oil and vinegar. [Brand name] products are made with cage-free eggs.**"
Funny that they forgot to mention the sugar, calcium disodium EDTA, and "natural flavorings" (whatever those are?). There is an asterisk next to the word "real" which leads me nowhere, but I can assume that if the word "real" needs be defined, it doesn't mean what we think it means. The double asterisk after "cage-free eggs" directs me to a statement that only 50% of the eggs that they use are "cage-free"... So if they're bragging about that 50% (now that we know what it means), god only knows where the other 50% came from.

Great. So we're on the same page about our eggs. Good thing they're good eggs, because in this application, we will be enjoying them raw! The addition of the lemon juice increases their acidity also, so there is even less chance of contracting salmonella.

Equipment:
1 wide-mouth mason jar
Immersion blender

Ingredients:
3 large pastured egg yolks (if using small eggs, add an extra yolk)
1 1/4 cup light olive oil
Juice of 1 (organic) lemon
1/2 tsp salt

Separate your eggs, and put the yolks in the mason jar. Save/freeze the whites for another time. I made a double batch, as you can see from the photos. Add the lemon juice and the salt. Dump in the entire amount of oil. Stick the immersion blender to the bottom of the jar, and start blending. Watch it emulsify before your very eyes! Slowly move the blender up toward the top of the jar until all the oil has been incorporated. Taste. If it needs more salt, add more salt. If it needs to be thinned out, add a tablespoon of water and mix. That's it! Cancer-free mayonnaise! You can double the recipe like I did, just remember that since there are no preservatives, only make as much mayo as you can eat in a week!