100% (Chicks!!! Part IV)

It is all paying off!!! Right?

$36 for chicks
$50 for feed
$30 for brood box and equipment
$150 for coop and run supplies
$40 for various chicken how-to guides
$40 for something I am sure I forgot we bought
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$346 (somebody check my math)

We have now collected 7 eggs from our flock (~$50/egg).  Quite the deal, right?

We have eaten five of those oeufs, and they really were spectacular (in taste, certainly not size).  In fact, Emily and I celebrated our first four eggs by showcasing them in a special meal.  Emily had the brilliant idea that we should eat a meal where 98% of the ingredients were produced on our little third of an acre.  The remaining two percent (not including the minimal spices) was gathered HHMM style.  Here is the recipe:

Enough romaine lettuce and arugula for two
7 new potatoes
3 beets
1 red onion
10 camas bulbs, sliced in half
4 fresh eggs
2 tablespoons olive oil

Quarter and roast the vegetables (not the greens!) in the oven until the onion is caramelized at something like 425 degrees.  Season with a little kosher salt and pepper.  Place roasted roots over a bed of greens, then fry eggs over easy (HHMM) or over medium (Emily).  Place fried eggs over the roasted roots.  Puncture the yolk and let it drain into the roots and greens and enjoy a heavenly and rich dressing.  Eat a meal that is 100% DIY.

Actually, this meal, as Emily pointed out, was rather poetic.  The one major ingredient that came from outside our short little property line was the camas, which I dug near the headwaters of the South Fork Clearwater River in a wet meadow that not too long ago was flooded with spring snow melt.  That meadow has since drained and those waters percolated, gurgled, bubbled, raged, and surged down Red River, down the South Fork Clearwater, down the Clearwater River, where a tiny portion of that water was sucked out of the river by the pump owned collectively by those of us who live in our little neighborhood.  Finally, that water was sprayed out over our garden, where beets and onions and potatoes have been growing.  So really, the same water that helped sprout that lavender colored camas, also made our potatoes sprout little lavender flowers.  How many meals give you a sense of place like that?

Yes, I know the olive oil was probably imported from Spain or some such... but hey... not too shabby!

So has it been worth it?  You be the judge...