Quiche and other personal egg trvia

Try feeding 30,000 mouths every day.  Well, actually I didn't do it alone.  My dad was in charge. 

You see, I grew up on a chickenfarm.  Laying hens.  Baby chicks.  Vast array of responsibility and opportunities and experiences - too vast to expand on here. 

From daily chores
to weekend work - (I was always working while my friends hung out together)
to moving day (moving chickens)
to 1000s of day old baby chicks peeping together inside one building until your ears hurt
to manure (oh the manure)
to making the hens cooooo by crowing for them just like the ol' rooster (I was good at it, too)
to egg gathering contests
to skunk shooting sprees
to baby chick debeaking days
to marketing old hens with crazy people as buyers (that could be a story in itself)
to picking mites off of me before I went to school (chickens frequently got mites on them and then so did I - ick, you're right)
to eating eggs and stewing hens in more ways than you can imagine.  Including QUICHE.  and angel food cake.  and custard.  and jelly roll,  and egg noodles.  Eggs poached, eggs over easy, eggs hard boiled, eggs softboiled, scrambled eggs, eggs benedict, eggs fried, egg sandwich, egg salad.  Sorta sounds like Bubba Gump, huh?

I certainly gained a work ethic through this rural life in Montana.  My dad had to decide whether or not he would go to town to work (because our rural acres were not enough to make a living for a family) or figure out something on the farm.  Figure out something, he did, building all 5 chickenhouses himself and managing the operation from day old babychicks to marketing and placing eggs into grocery store display cases all over the area.  (I could tell you about every alley, every restaurant or institution or grocery back door, and I could definitely tell you which restaurants you'd want to eat in and which ones you would not want to eat in from that back door exposure).

We were known as 'Pepper's Eggs'.  My dad's nickname was Pepper.

And here's the big news:  As a teenager, I even made the front page of an egg magazine, sitting on the back of a convertible car on the Rimrocks overlooking Billings with....you guessed it....baskets of eggs!

There are fascinating stories being told this week using the letter 'Q' for inspiration.  Go check it out with Jenny Matlock: