Speaker 1: A wabble. That's one of my favorite sayings.
Speaker 2: Me too, it makes me what you mean?
Speaker 1: Job, tell the people what it means.
Speaker 2: It means fuck yeah, hell yeah. Ah well ah Webb.
Speaker 3: My name is Evil Longoria and I am and welcome
Speaker 3: to Hungry for History, a podcast.
Speaker 1: That explores our past and present through food.
Speaker 2: On every episode, we'll talk about the history of some
Speaker 2: of our favorite dishes, ingredients, and beverages from our culture.
Speaker 1: So make yourself at home.
Speaker 2: This episode is for you, Eva, this is your episode. Well,
Speaker 2: you love eggs.
Speaker 1: I do love eggs. I do love eggs. I forget
Speaker 1: You're not an egg eater.
Speaker 2: I'm not a nagg eater.
Speaker 3: Well you're the one that said you called me and
Speaker 3: you go, should we do an episode on eggs because
Speaker 3: of the draw that's happening exactly?
Speaker 2: Well, my words were, is it crazy? Or should we
Speaker 2: do an episode on eggs?
Speaker 1: And then I said, oh, well, let's do it.
Speaker 3: It is it is. You know, it's so of the
Speaker 3: topic right now because people eggs are i mean insanely
Speaker 3: expensive and people are blaming it on the on the bird.
Speaker 1: Flu since January. But do you think that's it? What
Speaker 1: is the reason why eggs are skyrocketing right now. Is
Speaker 1: it just the bird flu?
Speaker 2: It's the bird flu. Yeah, it's the bird flu. And
Speaker 2: so nearly twenty three million birds have been infected with
Speaker 2: the bird flu since January. So it's a strain of
Speaker 2: flu of bird flu that's been around since twenty twenty two,
Speaker 2: and it has infected a lot of wild birds. So
Speaker 2: these wild birds fly over poultry flocks and they pee
Speaker 2: and they poop and they infect poultry and they either die.
Speaker 2: But if you're a farmer, you have to kill the poultry.
Speaker 2: And so these as these farms depopulate, they don't have
Speaker 2: laying hens.
Speaker 3: So it's decimating The bird flu is decimating chicken populations
Speaker 3: right now.
Speaker 2: Exactly exactly. And this is why eggs are so ridiculously expensive.
Speaker 3: Well, they're also the bird flu is also affecting dairy cows. Yes,
Speaker 3: So you know what's so crazy?
Speaker 1: I didn't know. I drink raw milk as much as
Speaker 1: I can. I do.
Speaker 3: I do. I like it.
Speaker 1: I just think it's it's great and it's.
Speaker 3: Good for you. I I could be wrong, but once
Speaker 3: this thing came out, I was like, well, I gotta
Speaker 3: stop drinking wrong.
Speaker 2: Where do you get it?
Speaker 1: I don't.
Speaker 3: My friend jesse Garcia brings it to me because he
Speaker 3: goes to a farm outside of LA and he'll bring
Speaker 3: it to me. And it only lasts five days, you
Speaker 3: know what I mean. It's because it's not pasteurized.
Speaker 2: So and do you drink the milk or do you
Speaker 2: make not that?
Speaker 3: No? No, I use it like I use it in cooking, Okay,
Speaker 3: in my in my coffee, I've been making my coffee
Speaker 3: creamer from scratch.
Speaker 1: Instead of the trad wife, I'm a progressive trad wife.
Speaker 2: You make bread, you make butter, Now you make your own.
Speaker 3: Mad I make my mayonnaise. I know you might like
Speaker 3: my homemade mayonnaise. I make my mayonnaise. Of course, I've
Speaker 3: always made all my dressings. But I make my sandwich bread,
Speaker 3: I make baguettes, I make my butter, I make our mayonnaise.
Speaker 3: And now I've been making my coffee creamer because holy crap,
Speaker 3: all the stuff that's in that coffee creamer is no bueno.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, it's a lot of preserved But don't do it.
Speaker 3: Don't don't drink raw milk now, because this virus is
Speaker 3: also reducing the milk output and cattle totally.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I went to the grocery store yesterday and the
Speaker 2: eggs were outrageous, But then it was just one one dozen.
Speaker 2: There were customer they were limiting, but they didn't have
Speaker 2: any and they didn't have that much milk either, and
Speaker 2: so yes, So.
Speaker 3: Now I know a lot of people voted for Trump
Speaker 3: because they thought he would bring down these prices, but
Speaker 3: this administration has pretty much been silent on it. And
Speaker 3: why is the CDC not allowed to put up studies
Speaker 3: on the bird flu?
Speaker 2: Well, because they're limiting the CDC and it's bad for business,
Speaker 2: so they say that they're bad for business, So it's horrible.
Speaker 2: The the Biden administration put in place a national milk
Speaker 2: testing strategy in December, so which tells you where the virus,
Speaker 2: you know, is, but you can't really control it unless
Speaker 2: you know where it is. And if the CDC isn't
Speaker 2: really putting anything out, or is it allowed to put
Speaker 2: anything out, you know, it's really hard to control it.
Speaker 2: And it takes months to produce replacement eggs and make
Speaker 2: it to the grocery store shelves. So it's been it's
Speaker 2: going to be I think it's going to be a while.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's going to be a minute.
Speaker 2: It's going to be a minute, so best to avoid
Speaker 2: raw cookie dough and raw cake battery.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we'll cook your eggs thoroughly, cook your eggs thoroughly.
Speaker 3: Well, when we come back, I want to know when
Speaker 3: we started eating eggs, because I do think it's weird.
Speaker 3: I love eggs, but I do think it's weird. You're
Speaker 3: gonna love this part.
Speaker 2: Don't go anywhere. So humans have been consuming eggs around
Speaker 2: the world since the dawn of time.
Speaker 1: It is kind of a really thing.
Speaker 2: But yeah, but people, you know, different kinds of eggs
Speaker 2: were and are still being eaten. You know, different parts
Speaker 2: of the world. Birds and reptiles lay eggs. So in
Speaker 2: mes America, prespanic cultures ate turkey eggs, duck eggs, iguana eggs.
Speaker 1: Do they scramble up the same way like.
Speaker 2: You just I guess, I mean it's an egg, so
Speaker 2: it's but reptiles as well, Yeah they lay eggs. Wow,
Speaker 2: wow right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, ancient Romans ate eggs as well, Chinese ate pigeon eggs,
Speaker 3: Japanese ate quail eggs, and then turtle egg eggs were
Speaker 3: once highly prized.
Speaker 1: Alligator eggs, but now it's the chicken egg the chicken.
Speaker 1: Egg is the most common.
Speaker 2: Yes, and even you know baking, I mean, eggs are
Speaker 2: so you know, even though I'm not an egg eater,
Speaker 2: I did taste the eggs that you made egg once
Speaker 2: and I had a little bit of it. But I mean,
Speaker 2: even though I don't eat them, you cook with them
Speaker 2: all the time for baking and just really, you know,
Speaker 2: you use them for everything. So baking even is an
Speaker 2: ancient practice. That the ancient Egyptian and the ancient Romans
Speaker 2: used eggs in baking breads and in baking you know, cakes.
Speaker 2: But the first domesticated fowl reached North America in fourteen
Speaker 2: ninety three with Columbus's second voyage.
Speaker 3: People were eating all kinds of eggs, But when did
Speaker 3: we start domesticating chickens.
Speaker 2: So this the chicken is bread. It's an interesting animal.
Speaker 2: It's bread for both it's meat and it's eggs. And
Speaker 2: it's thought to have originally been domesticated from a red
Speaker 2: jungle fowl. So this is a sort of wild bird
Speaker 2: native to multiple regions from Southeast Asia to southwest China.
Speaker 2: But chicken domestication was previously considered to have happened in
Speaker 2: the Indus Valley around two thousand BC, or perhaps you
Speaker 2: know earlier, there's evidence that maybe went back to Southeast
Speaker 2: Asia around six thousand BC. Chickens were initially used for
Speaker 2: rituals and to proclaim the hour of dawn, and then
Speaker 2: later sort of cockfighting and pep breeds were produced and
Speaker 2: raised around the globe. But commercial chicken breeds have been
Speaker 2: bred over the last one hundred years, so not really
Speaker 2: that long through selective mating of various indigenous breeds. So
Speaker 2: it's among the first animal brought to the Americas by colonizers,
Speaker 2: and in the mid eighteenth century we started seeing the
Speaker 2: development and if chicken breeds specifically for the task to
Speaker 2: produce eggs in the US.
Speaker 3: So yeah, the egg actually symbolizes different things in different cultures.
Speaker 3: It always represented life because obviously it's like the inception
Speaker 3: of life, but also early myth makers thought, you know,
Speaker 3: it was the sun as the egg was like, you know, yellow,
Speaker 3: it had a yellow yolk. There's so many legends that
Speaker 3: fairies consumed eggs of mythical birds like the phoenix, and
Speaker 3: then in Slavic and Germanic lands, people smeared their hose
Speaker 3: with eggs and hopes of transferring the eggs, fertility to
Speaker 3: the soil, and there's just so much that that eggs
Speaker 3: are symbolic for fertility in France, and so I just
Speaker 3: find that so interesting, Like I feel like we shouldn't
Speaker 3: eat eggs. It does symbolize all this like mythical legend,
Speaker 3: beautiful things, And I'm like, why are we eating them?
Speaker 3: But we do?
Speaker 1: And I do.
Speaker 2: We should to ingest that magic, right?
Speaker 1: Are we ingesting the magic?
Speaker 2: When we were recording Season one, I had a chance
Speaker 2: to visit Eva in Spain and she fried some eggs
Speaker 2: in a ton of Spanish olive oil for her husband.
Speaker 2: I have an aversion to the smell of eggs, but
Speaker 2: the fruity olive oil made the eggs actually smell good.
Speaker 2: And I've been making what I call the Eva eggs
Speaker 2: for my husband ever since.
Speaker 1: Are you ready record my my egg going in? All right?
Speaker 1: So how hot do you get it?
Speaker 2: Because you want to olive oil to burn.
Speaker 1: You want it hot. That's a lot of oil. So
Speaker 1: that's a lot of wealth.
Speaker 2: Yeah, do you serve it with the old with its
Speaker 2: swimming and the oil up to dump bread in?
Speaker 1: Yeah, for toast for your toast. There we go. Once
Speaker 1: it starts doing that off.
Speaker 3: The French way I think is you pour a little
Speaker 3: water in there and it goesh, and that's what steams
Speaker 3: the top of the egg. But in Spain they don't
Speaker 3: do Look at that. See those crispy edges. You want
Speaker 3: the crispy edges, but you want to loose.
Speaker 1: Yolk, you know, so you keep it really running on
Speaker 1: that inside. Yeah, that lights it running. You gotta put
Speaker 1: the salt right away for adhesive properties.
Speaker 2: I know, pepper, that's it.
Speaker 1: I put pepper on pippus. Yeah, I usually put chili flakes.
Speaker 1: All right, let's get it a little bit hotter. Okay,
Speaker 1: here we go. Second egg. All right, that's so interesting.
Speaker 1: We want it to bubble on top. You want it
Speaker 1: to all bubble up. So I just throw the oil
Speaker 1: on top because it's super hot. Cover it for like
Speaker 1: two seconds. That starts to pop. You turn it off.
Speaker 2: Are you trying to keet off completely off? Yeah?
Speaker 1: You like Dude's things. I probably will do it a
Speaker 1: little bit more well done.
Speaker 3: I mean crisp beer, because it could get it could
Speaker 3: get a lot crispier. I'm gonna get it really hot
Speaker 3: this time. Let's try it even hotter.
Speaker 2: So they have all of the flavor of I mean,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna try.
Speaker 1: I mean it's just soak and all. Look at this.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, I'm gonna burn this one. Not burned,
Speaker 1: but like super crispy.
Speaker 2: So then it has the texture of the crispiness and
Speaker 2: that on the bottom.
Speaker 1: I love that address that.
Speaker 2: It's such a cool visual, the kind of bubbles.
Speaker 3: M h.
Speaker 1: I love this over the yolk. Yeah, it's so cool looking.
Speaker 1: And then that's really chrispy. I could see the brown bit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: gotta like when it's burnt like that. Okay, this is
Speaker 1: let me get them and we have an avocado to
Speaker 1: put a little red chili flakes on his eggs. Beautiful.
Speaker 2: Did you know this? The color of an egg shell
Speaker 2: corresponds to the color of the hen's ear lobes.
Speaker 1: What what does that mean?
Speaker 2: Where's the ear lobe? By the way, they have like
Speaker 2: a little tiny ear lobe. No they don't, you know,
Speaker 2: they have like a little a little tiny piece of skin.
Speaker 2: And the color of the eggshell correspond.
Speaker 3: Because sometimes there's blue eggs and pink eggs, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 3: beautiful colors. All right, Well we got that in more
Speaker 3: fun facts after the break. What are eggs sold by
Speaker 3: the dozen. That's so funny. I've never really asked myself
Speaker 3: this question.
Speaker 1: Is it a mystery or do we know? We kind
Speaker 1: of know.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's sort of half half and half mystery.
Speaker 2: So there's a system that came to be known as
Speaker 2: English units, which was a combination of old Anglo Saxon
Speaker 2: and Roman systems of measurement. And back then eggs were
Speaker 2: sold by the dozen, so one egg could be sold
Speaker 2: for a penny, or twelve for a shilling, which was
Speaker 2: equal to twelve pennies. So this system traveled to the
Speaker 2: American colonies and it persisted, and so in the days
Speaker 2: of industrial food packaging, it was more practical to sell
Speaker 2: eggs in an even number. And the number twelve is
Speaker 2: divisible by two, three, and four, which makes it easier
Speaker 2: to give change, which is just kind of cool. So
Speaker 2: it's just basically it's just easier. So most parts of
Speaker 2: the world, eggs are sold by the dozen or half dozen,
Speaker 2: but in some countries they they could sell them by
Speaker 2: eights or tens, and in parts of India and Africa
Speaker 2: you could buy, like us, eggs buy the piece. I've
Speaker 2: never seen eggs by the piece. I always have seen
Speaker 2: it in half dozen.
Speaker 1: I've seen in Spain they have it by like six.
Speaker 1: You can do it, okay, the half yeah.
Speaker 2: The half dozen. Yeah, but it's just easier to give
Speaker 2: change because the number twelve is divisible.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what is the what where does the word egg
Speaker 1: or wibble come from?
Speaker 2: So the word webbel comes from the Latin ovum and
Speaker 2: the word egg is dates to prehistoric language Indo European
Speaker 2: source related to the word for bird. So the old
Speaker 2: English term was egg oeg almost egg o egg oh
Speaker 2: egg which meant bird, which meant bird.
Speaker 1: And then here's the thing.
Speaker 3: I just actually saw a TikTok on this. But like
Speaker 3: in Spain, we don't refrigerate our eggs. They're not refrigerated
Speaker 3: at the store and when I bring them home there
Speaker 3: in the pantry. But in the United States we refrigerate them.
Speaker 3: So why do some countries have it on the shelf
Speaker 3: and some like the US, are always refrigerated. I think
Speaker 3: it's really only the US that has it refrigerated. Most
Speaker 3: countries just have it on the shelf. Well, what I
Speaker 3: saw was it has to do with the pores and
Speaker 3: how also the pores on an eggshell, and also the
Speaker 3: travel time of transportation, and people forget how big the.
Speaker 1: United States is and so Europe.
Speaker 3: It's like from the farm to the market to your
Speaker 3: house is substantially a smaller travel time.
Speaker 2: The eggshell has as many as seventeen thousand pores.
Speaker 3: Crazy, yeah, yeah, that's crazy. That's why they're so hard
Speaker 3: to color at Easter.
Speaker 2: Oh really, I guess it's your delight to really yeah,
Speaker 2: really can get a little some diet. So in the US,
Speaker 2: soon after the eggs pop out of the chicken, producers
Speaker 2: put them in a machine at shampoos them with soap
Speaker 2: and hot water, and this compromises the egg by washing
Speaker 2: away this this barely visible coating that envelopes them, so
Speaker 2: it's very very barely visible. But this coating keeps water
Speaker 2: and oxygen in and bacteria out. So by washing them
Speaker 2: this increases the chances for infection. So that's why they
Speaker 2: need to be kept refrigerating. And also other countries, egg
Speaker 2: laying hens are vaccinated against salmonella, and so they keep
Speaker 2: the eggs on the shelf.
Speaker 3: By the way, milk as well. In Spain, we don't
Speaker 3: refrigerate until it's open. Oh really yeah, oh interesting. Milk
Speaker 3: is also not now here there's another thing that I
Speaker 3: got really mad at with beef right when it's like
Speaker 3: grass fed, range free, Like when I buy my beef,
Speaker 3: I'm like, why is this main?
Speaker 1: I am equally confused.
Speaker 3: With egg cartons when it's like cage free, free range,
Speaker 3: pasture raised, Like what does what do these labels mean?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: What is cage free? I mean I'm assuming that they're
Speaker 1: not a cage.
Speaker 2: Cage free is this term regulated by the USDA. It
Speaker 2: means that the eggs come from hens that aren't caged.
Speaker 2: But this doesn't mean that they freely, you know, roam around. Right,
Speaker 2: They're in a cage that's about eight and half by
Speaker 2: eleven the size of a piece of paper, and so
Speaker 2: that's basically you know where they are. So according to
Speaker 2: this book All about Eggs by Rachel Kong, cage free
Speaker 2: facilities have more hand on hand violence and lower air
Speaker 2: quality than facilities that use cages. And then there's free range,
Speaker 2: which is another USDA term meaning that eggs comes from
Speaker 2: hens that are have some sort of access to the outdoors.
Speaker 2: But it also doesn't mean that they can actually go outdoors.
Speaker 2: It just means that there is a little bit of
Speaker 2: outdoor space. A door exists, if the farmer wants to
Speaker 2: open it at some point, that's it. And then pasture
Speaker 2: raised is a term not regulated by the USDA. But
Speaker 2: if the egg carton says that the eggs have been
Speaker 2: pasture raised or stamps that say certified humane or animal
Speaker 2: welfare approved, it means that each hen is given one
Speaker 2: hundred and eight square feet of outdoor space and some
Speaker 2: barn space indoors. So this is close to this kind
Speaker 2: of farm vibe.
Speaker 1: That that can exist.
Speaker 2: So the sort of kinder eggs and also the most
Speaker 2: expensive eggs are the pasture raised plus your eggs. Since
Speaker 2: you grew up on a farm, did you have a
Speaker 2: chicken cook Yeah, oh yeah we had. We had chicken cope.
Speaker 1: I had to.
Speaker 3: That was one of my chores was I had to
Speaker 3: let the chickens out in the morning. I had to
Speaker 3: gather them at night. We had to go get the eggs.
Speaker 3: Some were mean, some would pick at you, some were
Speaker 3: some were like my pets. I always had baby chicki's
Speaker 3: in my bed bay always they were all over my bed,
Speaker 3: my room. I grew up with a pig in the house,
Speaker 3: I mean yeah. And our eggs were blue and pink
Speaker 3: and they were always different. But you know, it's so
Speaker 3: funny because they would always lay what we needed. We
Speaker 3: didn't have like an abundance. We didn't never didn't have
Speaker 3: egg like it was just the perfect amount that we
Speaker 3: always had. I love I love, I love it all eggs.
Speaker 3: I love a boiled egg. I love scrambled eggs. I
Speaker 3: like egg whites. I'm a big egg white person. I
Speaker 3: don't like poached eggs. And it's funny because I like vinegar,
Speaker 3: but I don't like the vinegary taste and I don't
Speaker 3: like the texture that the vinegar puts around.
Speaker 1: A poached egg. So if I have avacado toast, I'm
Speaker 1: like put a fried egg on it. I love eggs
Speaker 1: in Spain.
Speaker 3: Because of the olive oil, and there's a specific way
Speaker 3: that they make eggs. They put it on very very
Speaker 3: very high heat and like a really large amount of
Speaker 3: olive oil and they throw the egg in there and
Speaker 3: it goesh. So the egg the edges are so crispy,
Speaker 3: but the yolk is still runny, and as soon as
Speaker 3: it's in the pan, they turn it off, and so
Speaker 3: it's just like they do it the best.
Speaker 1: They make the best fried eggs.
Speaker 2: I remember when I visited you in Spain last year.
Speaker 2: You made those eggs for Pepe. Yeah, and they were
Speaker 2: beautiful with all the oil. I've made them for Dave,
Speaker 2: for my husband, and he's just like, it's like the
Speaker 2: eve eggs.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm a big fan of eggs, and I hope
Speaker 3: this bird flu thing goes away soon.
Speaker 1: Like, where's the end. I don't see the end, insights,
Speaker 1: I don't see the end.
Speaker 2: I think it's going to be a while. But I
Speaker 2: think that people should just keep aware of what's happening
Speaker 2: and cook your eggs well and don't eat raw cake
Speaker 2: batter and raw milk.
Speaker 1: Don't do any of it. So wait, well, Mitha, will
Speaker 1: you become an egg eater after this? Probably not, huh.
Speaker 3: I feel like this almost tears us from eating.
Speaker 1: It totally, although you just reinforced your reason of not
Speaker 1: to eat it.
Speaker 3: I know, I know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've never I've always had this aversion to the
Speaker 2: smell and the texture, and it's just although lately I've
Speaker 2: been I do this egg, I'll scramble it and make
Speaker 2: like a little omelet, and then I'll put gessore and
Speaker 2: and that I can eat because it has sauce and
Speaker 2: it has some sort of flavor. But but for the
Speaker 2: most part you know no. But thank you for listening.
Speaker 1: Don't forget to rate us, leave us your messages. We
Speaker 1: love hearing from you guys, right might they We do?
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for listening.
Speaker 3: Hungary for History is a hyphen Media production in partnership
Speaker 3: with Iheart's Michael Bura podcast network.
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