Animal, vegetable, MIRACLE!

If you know me well, I hope you are sitting down for this post. I did something unusual today, but something I have been mulling over for some time. I've been eating a mostly vegan diet for 6 years (the first 3-4 years were strictly vegan, then I began eating a little goat cheese during my pregnancy). About 90% of my meals are vegan, and we like to have some wild Alaskan salmon or halibut on occasion, and sometimes some fancy goat's milk cheese as an appetizer before dinner. A few months ago I finished reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver, and the book highlighted eating locally -- food grown or raised close to home, in the way that food has always been meant to be grown and raised, by small farms who take personal pride in their products. This book, along with the growth of local farmer's markets and other sources of information, has given me new insights about what I eat, and why.

So in case you are still sitting here in suspense, here is what I brought today at my local farmer's market:

See these beautiful eggs? They are eggs from pasture-fed, free-range chickens raised locally. Chickens raised without antibiotics or hormones. Raised a short distance from my home so the shipping costs/time from chicken to me was minimal. Eggs that have way more nutrition than the standard white sterile eggs at the grocery store that were raised by chickens in disgusting factory farms that stress out the chickens so much that the nutritional value of their eggs are low and the cholesterol is high. You can see the difference in these eggs by the different colors and shapes/sizes of these eggs.
I haven't cracked an egg in 6 years. Six years!! So it was a little weird, and this was more out of curiosity because I have not been craving eggs or anything like that. So I cracked open a few eggs, scrambled them, cooked them, and ate them! They tasted just fine. Not like "wow, I have been totally missing out on this for 6 years!" but more like "humm this is not bad. An easy meal once in a while..." Mike enjoyed it and Jake didn't think it was anything special. He was way more interested in the avocado.
After dinner he wanted to play with the lunch tins.
Mr. Serious Face.