Eggsellent Resource

If you are a food nerd, and you love eggs, then you should check out the American Egg Board's eggcyclopedia. (Arvay, I know you love this!)

For example, today I wanted to know how reliable the sell-by dates on egg cartons were because we have two eggs that are fairly old and I wasn't sure I could use 'em for breakfast.

Turns out, there is a 3 digit number on your egg carton that is the pack date. It is the number of the day of the year when your eggs were packed out of 365 (or 366 in leap year, I would assume). If you are lazy, you can use a date calculator and plug in 1/1/07 and the number to figure out what the pack date is on the gregorian calendar.

The eggcyclopedia says that eggs, stored properly, should stay fresh 4 to 5 weeks from the pack date. Guess we'll be going out for brunch.

(As an aside, I've never met a food nerd who didn't love eggs. In fact, I used to not like them, but my love for them has been growing roughly in proportion to my food nerdiness. Souflées, breads, sauce thickeners, soups -- they are just so versatile. Plus, according to folklore, the one hundred folds on a properly trained chef's hat are supposed to represent the 100 ways they know how to prepare an egg. How cool is that?)