How Free Range Are Your Eggs?

Thank you for this image - you can find the original here

We kept chickens on the commune where I grew up. I'm not even sure what variety now, just that they were plump, rust feathered birds who laid a mean orange yolked egg - when they felt like it and weren't being chased across the field by a frisky cockerel. I spent hours drawing those birds, aiming to capture their essence as they scratched in the grass, stepped back for a look and then pecked a bit, before doing the whole thing again. They peered at me out of one eye, head cocked, ready to run should I do anything the slightest bit fox-like. Eventually I became part of the scenery and they resumed scratching and looking, clucking an audible record of findings that reached a sustained peak whenever an egg had been laid.

They had a little wooden house on stilts that they would shuffle into every night, safe from the fox, warm and cosy in hay filled nest boxes or snuggled on a perch like beans in a pod, fat and happy. I had the unenviable task of cleaning that hen house from time to time - shared as it was between the farm workers. Even done regularly the ammonia was pungent as those chickens couldn't wait for morning to relieve themselves. Chicken fleas would land on my bare arms, like slow London buses, confused by my lack of feathers, but not choosy (you didn't know that chickens had fleas? Believe me, for every animal in existance there is a flea that loves them the most).

When I finally ventured into the world to embark on a degree course, I already knew that chickens kept in cages were a bad thing, a very bad thing, something to tut aloud about in the supermarket and give disparaging looks to purchasers of caged eggs. Back then free range eggs cost a lot more than caged eggs, but I stretched my meagre student purse and forked over the extra money because my conscience demanded it. I was already heads up on many of my student colleagues, who held eggs in high esteem as one of the few cheap foods they actually knew how to cook, but didn't give a second thought to the welfare of the hens that laid them.

Then a funny thing happened, free range got cheaper. Everything was shouting about how free range it was and sprouting new caring labels, such as, 'Freedom Foods' guaranteed by the RSPCA and little red tractors with the comforting, 'Farm Assured' banner. I carried on buying free range eggs, happy that more of us could do it, sometimes even treating myself to organic eggs, because they too seemed miraculously cheaper. Ignorance was bliss.

Eventually a penny dropped for me as I realised that someone had to be bearing the cost of all this 'freedom to roam outdoors in daylight' - a basic right non? You bet it wasn't the supermarkets, and it probably wasn't the farmers, it was those chickens. Chickens housed in their thousands in great barns with little openings in the side through which the chickens were free to roam - if only they could make it over the thousands of other chickens who also fancied a bit of fresh air. Eventually most of those chickens gave up the idea of sun on their backs and milled around in the guano, just like the barn raised hens, whose eggs we scorn and tut over, believing that we are doing something right buying bargain free range for just a few pence more.

With eggs, you get what you pay for. If you buy them at the farm gate and can see your chickens scratching about for bugs, they might be of mixed size and not shining white, or uniformly brown, but they will be the real article - free range. If you buy them in the supermarket you have to be really clever because free range egg boxes have gorgeous pictures of hens foraging in lush green grass, regardless of how the eggs have been produced. The blurb might say that those birds have access to pasture or woodland, but how many actually got out there? You can't even tell by the colour of the egg itself because commercial feed often has elements in it that produce a more orange yolk. 

Be an investigator and ask about the welfare of your eggs, ask what they were fed on and what happened to the hens after their first year - most commercial layers get the chop whereas they could lay for several years.

As I have said before in my post about omega fats - even if you don't care about the chickens, think about yourself. Eggs laid by chickens that eat mostly grass and bugs are more nutritious than those who don't. They might even save you buying some of those costly supplements or creams to make yourself look younger. Eggs produced on a small scale benefit the planet, because the chickens simply use what's there already, and put a bit of nutrition back each time they poop on the land. Whereas eggs produced on a large scale use power to heat and light, drugs to maintain flock health, engineered feed to, 'give the birds everything they need' (except grass - oh and a life) and finally a great big pit to shovel all the built up excrement into so that it doesn't burn the chickens socks off.

So maybe you could check out your local farmers market, or make a fortnightly trip to a farm shop instead of picking eggs up in the supermarket - Local Food Advisor is a good resource if you are looking for suppliers near you. At the very least choose organic if you do buy in the supermarket and support retailers like Waitrose who have the highest welfare standards of any supermarket in the UK. We all have a great protest vote to hand - our wallets - lets use it for good.

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Go Ahead Honey it's Gluten Free! Grain Free Liquorice & Ginger Cupcakes with Chocolate Frosting

I referred to these cupcakes last week after some fiddling with the recipe rendered it less, not more. Is this some sort of veiled message on modern food in general from the universe, I wonder? Hmmm?

I made these on Sunday when Nick was at work (on a weekend? yes he is very wicked indeed and there is surely no rest for him). As they cooled, Fin and I took our stunt kite to a hillside overlooking Burton Bradstock beach to enjoy the wind whilst huge puffball clouds did battle with frothing waves. Every so often the clouds would crack open to let a shaft of honey fall through, illuminating thrill seekers on the beach below us as they darted forward and back, avoiding the crash and suck of the water. After an hour we'd taken enough buffeting and our arms were tired from stroking the sky. Fin streaked madly downhill in seconds making a noise like an expiring balloon.

Back home I smeared chocolate butter-cream messily over the cakes whilst Fin hopped about excitedly with his tongue hanging out. I handed him one quickly, in case he reached combustion speed whilst my back was turned and fetched a camera to record my efforts.

The light was already failing and Fin looked so picturesque (in a kind of chocolate smeared, wild eyed, small fingered way), so I begged him to slow down in order to take a picture. He was eating it upside down, as is his usual style - cake first and finally the great glob of partially melted icing on top. I hoped to get a shot before he had wolfed the entire thing, so I asked him to stop a minute whilst I got a good picture. He held the upside down cake away from his mouth and threw me a winning smile for about ten seconds before his tongue snaked out and tasted a little icing, lending him the air of a cow searching for some out of reach morsel. So I tried again, and again, and again, until my nerves snapped and I shouted for him to stop licking so I could get the shot.

Fin looked at me with disbelief for a moment and then the cake slipped out of his hot fingers and onto the table - sticky, soft, chocolaty icing side down. Smeary fingers held up in the international symbol for surrender, he raised his eyes to mine and mouthed, 'sorry' as I let out a deep, low, mummy is a long suffering person sound. And then we both fell about laughing - well aware that cakes are for eating lustily, upside down and with your fingers, food photographs be damned!

This is my submission for this month's Go Ahead Honey event, hosted by the inspiring and talented Elana of Elana's Pantry. The theme was Grain Free Cakes and I hardly need say that it couldn't be closer to my cupcake shaped, grain free heart.

Although these cakes are gluten and grain free and super low on the sweet, they are not suitable for SCD followers as they contain both ground liquorice root and cocoa powder. In order to make them SCD compliant, double the honey content, omit ground liquorice and frost with vanilla and honey butter-cream or sweetened strained yogurt.

Liquorice & Ginger Cupcakes with Chocolate Frosting

(makes 10)

7oz ground almonds (almond flour)

2 oz whole almonds

4 large sticky dried figs

4 large eggs

100ml walnut oil (or another vegetable oil or melted butter)

two heaped dessertspoons of set honey (about 80ml)

3-4 tsp ground liquorice root (you can buy teabags full of it if you can't find a box)

4 tsp ground ginger root

1 tsp ground cinnamon

2 tsp vanilla extract (I use bourbon vanilla - use less if it is very strong)

zest of 1 lemon and 4 tsp of juice

pinch of sea salt or himalayan rock salt

preheat the oven to 160C (fan assisted) and fill your muffin tin with cases. Pour water into the two spare holes to give a nice moist atmosphere to the oven.

Separate eggs and beat the whites with lemon juice and salt until stiff peaks form.

Beat the yolks, vanilla and honey with an electric whisk until pale and starting to thicken. Pour the oil in slowly whilst still beating (or in small additions if you find that fiddly) until the mixture forms a thick pale runny mayonnaise.

In a clean spice/coffee grinder, grind the almonds and the figs until they form fine damp crumbs, but not until they turn to nut butter - the ground fig seeds give a wonderful texture. You may need to do this in two batches.

Stir together all the remaining dry ingredients and the zest and then fold gently into the egg yolk mix.

Spoon half of the egg whites into the nut mix and fold until combined, then gently fold in the rest just until no white remains - don't beat the air out as it is the only thing keeping these cakes fluffy.

Spoon carefully into the waiting cases and bake for 20 minutes.

Cool and ice when completely cold with chocolate butter-cream below.

Chocolate and Honey Butter-cream

5oz slightly salted butter (I use goats) room temperature

1 1/2 oz set honey

2 oz cocoa

2 tsp vanilla extract

Beat everything together until lighter in colour and fluffy textured - add a little coconut or almond milk as you beat to get an even lighter frosting. Pile generously onto cakes, spoons, fingers...and definitely lick the bowl.

I'm Dreaming of a Green Christmas

Fin and I made our way around the supermarket today, creating a modest pile of nuts, toilet paper, sheep's yogurt and some much needed new mugs. As Fin had control of the trolley (somewhat too enthusiastically for my nerves) we took a different route to my usual skirt around the edge where the real food lives. I looked up from the shopping list to see Fin careering along the Christmas aisle, where gold and red shone amongst frosted baubles and smiling Santas. Around us, people were accumulating tins of chocolates, advent calendars, cheap mass produced decorations, festive napkins and plastic nik naks to fill stockings, knowing all the while that when January rolled round again, they would fill their bins with the same, broken, chewed, screwed up and discarded.

I remember that feeling of needing to fill Christmas with stuff. The lure of a luscious pine tree, forest scented and laden with baubles, needles falling as it baked in the warmth of a centrally heated home. The long list of friends, family and colleagues to purchase gifts for, nights spent crafting presents, making and writing cards, baking huge, richly fruited cakes and puddings, unwrapping them each week for another dose of brandy and finally a thick blanket of yellow marzipan and sweet spiky icing.

I remember a vague feeling of anxiety that I wouldn't get everything done in time, that my presents would not be perfectly chosen, cards would not arrive on time, gifts left unwrapped until the mad dash of Christmas eve. I loved it too, because who doesn't love to give? I loved the process of gifting, of choosing and then wrapping those symbols of my regard as gorgeously as possible with coloured paper and ribbon. 

One year I even worked in the Christmas department at Liberty on Regent Street. Like a child in a sweet store, I touched the tree decorations reverently, planning and re-planning my tree daily. There were glass pears that seemed to have been shaken with sugar, bunches of iridescent grapes, long silky tassles, little wooden soldiers with moving limbs, smiling babushkas and boxes of glass baubles in a pantone range of mouth watering hues. Come New Year's day, we struggled into work still half drunk to slash the prices to half. We ducked into the stock room to knock back a shot of Christmas pudding flavoured brandy and shove a handful of leftover cake into our growling stomachs, knowing that we had to sell Christmas half price, to people who were onto the next thing and didn't care for our ornaments anymore. To say it was demoralising is an understatement indeed.

As each year passed and Christmas rolled round again I found myself both dreading and yet, unaccountably drawn into the merry-go-round of gifting and gorging as helplessly as a leaf in a stream. That is, until a couple of years ago when I was struck down with flu - not the elegant sniffly kind, but real bone wrenching, gasping, constitution breaking flu. Christmas was canceled, guests turned away and the holiday passed in a haze of comforting broth and the sound of Fin and Nick making lego starships. It was blissful.

This year I don't need the flu to help me realise what I treasure about Christmas and how I can prevent myself being dragged into the undertow of consumerism. I know that what matters is to have my very dearest around me, to spend time with them, hanging out, playing games, snuggled on the sofa and flying kites in the cold blue sky of December. It won't be any better if I spend hours in the kitchen crafting something that will leave us prostrate on the sofa, sleeping off the calories. It won't be any better if I open lots of shiny new things, when I have everything I actually need already. It certainly won't be any better if I kill a tree merely to bring it into my house and dress it up in finery - like a child dresses a cat for fun - so I can watch it die slowly in my living room.

This year I will cut up some paper for origami, dust off the board games and playing cards, rent some great movies and put a piece of local, organic Dexter beef in the oven, to melt slowly into a perfect, succulent accompaniment for some lovingly prepared vegetables. I plan to gather Nick and Fin into the kitchen and hand them knives and chopping boards so that we can all partake in the making of the meal. I don't want any presents - of course Fin will have a few - although if anyone would like to give something as a gesture I urge them to give to charity and send me a card so that I can share that warm glow of giving something meaningful and useful, where it really is needed.

I truly am looking forward to Christmas this year, safe in the knowledge that I can relax and hibernate with my loved ones - filling the winter stillness with mirth and festivity, not hurry and fluster. 

The rubbish men needn't worry about my house this year, it will be business as usual.

A Little Soup and a Warm Heart

It seems that life keeps me away from the keyboard rather a lot just now and I hardly know where to start when I sit here with a few spare minutes to fill.

Winter has crept up with such stealth that I find myself almost scarf-less against it's frosty fingers. Finley leaves the house each day with a small steel flask warming his rucksack, a lunchtime buffer of vegetable soup made with rich chicken stock and fresh bay leaves snatched from the tree outside the door. When I uncork the stopper each evening with my sudsy hands, I find it empty, a job well done, a full belly, a little engine running  smoothly through the afternoon.

I made some cupcakes for Go Ahead Honey - liquorice and ginger with a creamy chocolate frosting. We sat at the table and ate them gratefully, teasing out the last gingery crumbs with our tongues, licking chocolaty fingers, wishing the cakes had lasted just a little longer. It was evening and I forgot to take any photos, so I planned to make them again in a week or so. I tweaked the recipe some the second time and they turned out okay, but nothing on the previous batch, my tweaking had been in vain.

Nick just smiled indulgently and told me to trust my instincts, because they were never wrong. And I held his hand for a long time because his fingers feel like home.

I'll make them again soon and share them with you.

Omega 3 Fats and Free Range Meat

I have a little radio which follows me about the house as I cook, clean, wash and do pretty much anything that doesn't require reading. The dial is always set to radio four (talk radio) and I look forward to the Food Programme each Sunday with something approaching religious fervour. The programming is pretty broad church, but often focused on local, seasonal and sustainable products, championing small producers and 'slow' food. I often find myself pausing dishcloth in hand with a knot of joy in my heart that this type of thing is mainstream now and not just for us hairshirt wearing types to bleat about as we wash our muddy veg.

This week the show strayed a little further into what I consider my territory - nutrition - so I hushed Nick and Fin from their daily business in order to immerse myself completely. It concerned the essential fatty acids Omega 6 and 3 - well known to parents trying to boost their children's brain power, arthritis sufferers aiming to reduce inflammation and countless baby boomers who were fed cod liver oil neat from a spoon before it got packaged up and sold as palatably chewy fruit flavoured supplements.

I'm not going to patronise you, because I'm sure that you already know that the western diet is too high in Omega 6 (found in vegetable oils, breads, cereals, poultry, eggs and nuts among others) and much too low in Omega 3 (found in fish, flaxseed, walnuts, grass fed meat, cheese and milk etc). Mostly because the foods that contain Omega 6 are widely consumed and Omega 3 containing foods much less so. The reason that this is a problem is because we need balance and when the essential fats are out of balance a whole host of health problems occur.

Omega 3 deficiency is thought to contribute to disorders as diverse as cancer, cariovascular health, ADHD, PMS, Arthritis, Mental Health Disorders, Skin problems and Immunity. With a list of related conditions due to inflammation caused by lack of Omega 3. See anything you like? Most of us have suffered from a deficiency of this nutrient at some point, to one extent or another and there just aren't enough cod in the sea to provide us with the amount we would need to correct it with supplements. In fact, there aren't enough fish in the sea for us to correct the imbalance that way either.

Before you rush off to scoop up a handful of cod liver oil pills, or swap to a brand of margarine that is higher in Omega 3 than all the others, remember that you should probably be beware packaged foods that claim to have health benefits - unless it's a bag of flax seed. Margarine is a good example of a food that manufacturers know is disastrously high in Omega 6. Knowing that Omega 6 is in for some seriously bad press, they have added a little Omega 3 to the mix and slapped on a label that screams, 'high in Omega 3!'. Yet if you were to consume enough margarine to get your Omega 3 requirement, you would ingest many, many, many times more than you need of Omega 6 (not to mention a disgusting amount of calories and processed food). Health claims on food packaging are rarely anything more than a marketing tool for something you didn't need to eat in the first place. Butter will always win out in my opinion - because it is a real food, unprocessed, something our body and tastebuds recognise with ease. It's not something you should eat with abandon (ok, maybe occasional abandon) but it's not the bad guy of margarine advertising propaganda.

Not all Omega 3 fats are created equal either - or rather converted by the body equally. The fats can be broken down (chemically speaking) into long chain and short chain fats. I'm not going to go into this in detail here because you can go look it up here if you're really interested. What you need to know is that the long chain fats which occur in animal and fish products are more easily assimilated by the body than the short chain version which generally occurs in plants (nuts, flax, vegetables and fruit). This doesn't mean that vegetarians have to eat huge quantities of organic cheese in order to get their requirement, but they do need to show a real commitment to eating green vegetables, nuts, wholegrains and eggs and reducing the amount of fried, baked and processed foods they put away.

The answer for non vegetarians is to eat free range animal produce because Omega 3 is absent from meat, milk and eggs that have been produced without grass and insects. Isn't that amazing? We all know that it's wrong to keep hens caged, pigs in stalls and raise cows in barns, but did you know that eating these products was depleting you of one of the major nutrients you need to keep your heart, brain, joints, nervous system and skin healthy? Free range meat, milk, butter, poultry, eggs and of course - all oily fish are all good dietary sources of omega 3 fats because they have been raised with the sun on their back and a belly full of grass and insects, just what they need to be healthy themselves.

I'm not advocating eating huge quantities of any of this animal produce - if the vegetarians can get by without it, then the rest of us might just want to take a leaf out of their book and use animal products (even those rich in omega 3) as a complement to a diet rich in vegetables and fruit. A belly full of omega 3 saturated meat won't do you any good at all if it sits there undigested. Help it all along with life giving vegetables, salads and fruit to get the best results.

It's not complicated at all when you strip it back to basics. In fact, getting your essential fatty acids couldn't be more delicious. The more real food you eat, the less you'll need to worry about getting your complement of Omega 3 fats and you'll be supporting good farming practice at the same time. Pass the watercress, walnut and organic chicken salad will you?