So Simple, An Engineer Can Understand It

Thankfully, late winter has arrived, with it's more abundant hours of daylight, and my hens are swinging back into production mode.  After carefully doling out my remaining stash of eggs laid last year (the hens typically take a break in the darkest months, from late November or early December until mid- to late February), I'm very happy to walk into the coop each day and see this:

fresh eggs!

It's always cause for rejoicing when those first eggs of the year start appearing.  The long, virtually eggless winter is over!  No longer do I need to ration eggs.  

In fact, this week, the girls in the coop have been giving me four eggs a day. Soon I will have an abundance of eggs, and we can eat them in all the ways we love them even if it uses a whole bunch: the 5-egg brownie recipe, omelets, custard, angel food cake, homemade egg noodles. . .

Vitally important is a system for making sure the eggs are used in a timely manner as well as planning for the decline in production in the fall and the eventual end of production in the winter.  

I make sure the egg cartons are rotated between filling and use by marking each full carton with the date on which it was filled before putting the full carton in the basement fridge, and then when using eggs, bringing up to the kitchen fridge the carton that has the oldest date written on it. As each carton is emptied (ie all the eggs in it are eaten), the date is crossed off, and it is put in the cupboard to await refilling.  Pretty simple: look for a date, use the carton with the oldest date first.  Don't use the carton in the kitchen fridge that has no date.  There should always be two (and only two) cartons of eggs in the kitchen: the one with the date that is being eaten, and the one without a date that is being filled.

That has been my system since 2003, which was the first year we raised chickens and got our own farm eggs. A foolproof system, I thought.  A system which all four of my children learned and understood, and taught their significant others and the grandchildren.  A system that I thought DH understood too.

A system which he's followed: eat from the carton with the visible date, don't eat from the carton with no date visible (ie if the date is crossed off, that is the carton being filled) for 16 years without reminder or explanation.  Until this past December, that is, when we were down to our last two cartons of eggs, one of which was very slowly being refilled as the chickens sporadically laid an egg or two in a week's time during the spiral down to the shortest day of the year.

In his defense, he was cooking breakfast for himself and his hunting buddy (I wasn't home that morning), and it's well known around our house that when this particular buddy is around, DH's intelligence tanks. Which, really, is no excuse.  And it's not the excuse he used for cooking the SIX freshest eggs (SIX!!! eggs, for TWO people--during the time of year when we are rationing eggs the most!) and emptying my 'being filled' carton instead of getting eggs from the carton next to it; the one with an October date legible on it. 

No, his excuse was that my egg carton system was confusing.  Nobody could tell, he told me, in front of this buddy, which eggs were supposed to be eaten and which were supposed to be left alone.

So, I came up with a new system so simple, it would be impossible for an engineer to not understand it.  All I needed was a red marker and a sticky note, and the problem was solved.

Egg cartons for engineers. . . 

Everyone who opens my fridge now, finds this hilarious (and easy to understand).  From DH, there has been no comment.  He does now, however, always get eggs from the correct carton.