I think the better question is, who decided that an the chicken egg would be a good thing to eat, especially if they had known where it came from, assuming that the first egg came from a chicken to start with? However, if the egg came first it stands to reason that no one ate it. If they had there would be no chickens, and therefore no more eggs, and I would not be writing these words. I hope if you are still reading you are not confused! But I think I know who it was who ate the first chicken egg.
Let’s think about the first chicken farmer. He had roosters and chickens. No one had begun eating chicken eggs at this time. So all of the eggs that the chickens laid turned into more chickens. It didn’t take long before the chicken farmer had more chickens than he could handle. He had chickens on top of his house, in his house, running amok all over the place, bothering the neighbors, and causing all kinds of problems. The streets must have been covered with chicken poop. People had to watch where they stepped when they walked in their yards. Chickens were everywhere. Roosters were so plentiful that many of them stood in line for hours at the door of the hen house, and these roosters created quite an inharmonious cacophony just prior to sunrise every morning. How would you like to have been that farmer’s neighbor?
The farmer knew he had to do something. I’m sure he and his family had been eating chicken for every meal, especially those noisy roosters. His wife was quickly running out of ways to cook chicken; fried, roasted, baked, grilled, shish-k-bobbed, in casseroles, and there was always leftover chicken. No doubt they were getting tired of eating chicken. So finally the farmer figured that getting rid of the eggs was the answer to his problem. If he could think of a way to do that he would be able to cut his chicken population as much as he wanted. He knew that baby chickens came out of those eggs, and eventually after the chickens were big enough they ate them. Maybe the contents of the egg, before it became a baby chicken, could be eaten as well. I think that first chicken farmer cracked one of those fresh eggs open, looked at that bright orange yolk and tried to figure out a way that that runny stuff could be consumed. I believe in time the farmer or someone in his family ate the first egg and saw that it wasn’t that bad. They probably thought it would be a good break from chicken..
This brings us to another question, how was the first egg eaten? Was it eaten raw, boiled, fried, poached, as an ingredient in a cake, a pie, a pancake, or maybe in chicken salad. Chicken salad makes more sense as there had to be plenty of both ingredients. Personally if I had been the first chicken farmer I would have had my eggs fried, over easy. But again we don’t know if the chicken or the egg was first, or who ate the first egg, and we don’t know in what manner the first act of consumption was carried out. I suppose these questions will remain as much of a mystery as who was it that wrote the book of love.
One thing we do know is that people like the Colonel have made gobs of money because of the chicken. The poultry businesses, the chicken restaurant franchises, and the big egg producers have made tons of money. And this past weekend and this coming coming weekend the egg, both the real ones and the plastic ones, will greatly increase this money making industry. And that ain’t no “chicken feed”! Happy Easter everybody and good luck with your Easter Egg hunts!
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