I would have laughed and called today’s celebration as “absurd” had I not been a recipient of the nutritional benefits and, let me call it, the healing powers of the eggs.
Yes, today, is World Egg Day!
Now, now, now, you can laugh and call me crazy for writing about this but I don’t care. Eggs got me through my second pregnancy, which had me reacquainted with gestational diabetes. As a logical progression, I was told to cut on carbohydrates and fill my diet with protein and fiber.
I spent a good nine years of my young life in a small village called Libas in the town of Merida, in a province called Leyte, in a country aptly named the Philippines, the Pearl of the Orient Seas.
In that village, I learned about rural life.
People raise chickens and pigs in their backyards. They climb coconut trees to savor and relish coconut water and coconut meat or extract coconut milk from dried coconut fruit. Yes, they don’t come in cans in our small village!
People actually share their food so don’t be surprised that someone will knock on your door any time of the day and gives you a bowl of this and that for lunch, snacks or dinner.
In our little backyard, my Mom, who was a city girl but immediately adjusted to the slow life in the countryside, raised chickens. So… naturally, we had eggs.
I remember the mornings when she would just say: “Cris Evert, get me some eggs!” I would then proceed to our backyard and get some eggs from the chicken’s nest.
You can imagine the mess and the smell. Chicken manure is not perfume. But I remember those times, those memorable times. These days, I wish that I could just spend one day going through that morning routine again.
Remember scientific experiments in high school where you are required to bring an embryo of a particular animal (or plant) soaked in denatured alcohol? I never had a problem with finding one because all I need to do was wait for one mother hen to sit on one egg for a couple of days. I won’t let the egg hatched so I can crack it open, put in a mason jar, and preserved the animal with denatured alcohol.
My brother Hendrix called me a murderer. He was a staunch advocate of the no-to-chicken killing in our younger years. He would even cry when we had to, uhm, you know, “work” on the chicken so we can have fried chicken or chicken adobo for lunch.
Eggs were very much part of our diet and I love every way that it was prepared.
While pregnant with my third baby, I would mix eggs in a a vegetable dish that consists of bitter gourd, tomatoes, onions, and garlic. It helped maintain my blood sugar level that led to a healthy baby boy.
Reading about World Egg Day had me reached the website of the International Egg Commission and was a surprise to see an organization devoted to eggs. Another website, Think Egg, is a fun resource about World Egg Day and published fascinating facts about eggs.
Well, I don’t know how big of a celebration is this day to other countries but in our home, we eat eggs everyday so I guess, I will just make this day extra special but making leche flan. What’s leche flan? It’s a dessert that I grew up with and it has a lot of egg yolks. Check out the recipe here.
Have an egg-citing Friday!
P.S. This entry was written on September 23, 2015. Start: 1:10 a.m.; end: 1:28 a.m.
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T30WC or The 30-minute Writing Challenge is a writing exercise born out of this blogger’s need to maintain a habit of writing. Subjects of each writing challenge is just about anything but should ONLY be written within 30 minutes. For the month of October, we’re featuring different celebrations here at T30WC!