Blue eggs

A belated birthday present has arrived in the post.

At the beginning of the year, dear friends moved to the South Australian countryside to live the dream. The one that includes chickens, starry nights, a quieter life, a kitchen garden. I didn't actually expect to see the fruits of their labours, or should I say their chickens', until we got around to visiting.

Instead, I found on our doorstep, individually bubble-wrapped inside a vintage tin, eight fresh eggs, six of them a stunning blue.

After this photo was taken, I cracked two of the blue ones (from an Aracauna chicken) and fried them. Delicious. Well, they actually taste exactly like any fresh egg but the beauty is there's less white so getting that perfect soft yolk/firm white mix is very easy. Less cholesterol than regular eggs too, I'm told.

If these were available commercially, I'd buy them in a hearbeat, if only just to look at them.

I'm wondering if I'll find small crushed pieces of blue shell in the garden when the next lot of compost matures and feeds the garden. I hope so.