(Post 63 of 233. Thanks again to those who participated in the Fundrazr!)

As many of my long-time readers know, I have an intolerance to chicken eggs. Meaning eating a chicken egg won’t kill me, but it does make me feel ill. Chicken eggs smell rotten to me, which the allergist told me is a defence mechanism and proof that my body doesn’t tolerate eggs. A slice of cake made with two or three eggs is fine, mayonnaise or flan is not. I have completely cut out eggs at home, going to vegan blogs to find egg-free recipes for cakes, pancakes, pasta, and even things like frittatas and omelettes (hint: besan). But there is always a natural curiosity when you can’t have something.

Well, a few months ago, I was transcribing an interview with a famous Australian actress when she revealed that she had to eat an egg for a scene in her movie and that they had to use a duck egg because she is allergic to chicken eggs.

I immediately got on Google. Yep, people can be allergic to a chicken egg but be fine with a duck egg (and vice-versa) because they have different types of proteins in them! I got obsessed with the idea of trying a duck egg, especially fried and with a runny yolk to dip toast into. I thought duck eggs would be easy to find here. Jajaja! I struck out with all my contacts and finally went to the local food hunt group. Patricia at L’épicure gourmet, a treasure of a fine grocery store, said she had some!

I headed there this morning. This store is super expensive and you have to know what items are true treasures that are worth any amount of money and what are things you could find cheaper in a supermarket. So that’s why I spent $300 (about $18CAD) on two tins of UK Heinz beans… 😀

The eggs were very affordable, $4.5 each (about $0.27CAD). I also loaded up on yellow onions (so glad I have room to freeze them now!), Heinz chili sauce (apparently a very Canadian product), A1 steak sauce, and the last of their pastrami.

I came in and put together a proper fry-up. The duck egg was very hard to crack, kind of plasticky, and I got a couple of bits of shell in my pan.

Research told me to fry the egg in a generous amount of butter and then cover it with a lid to let it steam a little. I was surprised when I took the lid off that the beautiful yellow yolk now had a white film over it. Yes, that’s pastrami. I would not be so pedestrian as to have bacon with duck eggs. 😀

The first thing I noticed was that I knew I was cooking eggs, there was a distinctive “egg smell,” but it was not nasty. It didn’t have the rotten component to it. Fascinating.

First bite!

I liked the yolk on toast. There wasn’t much flavour, but it was creamy and rich and I knew it was very nutritious, high in the B12 and iron that I have a hard time getting naturally.

The white tasted vaguely like egg, but not repulsively like chicken eggs. I liked the crispy buttery bits the best. I think a fried egg might be a nice addition to a breakfast sandwich with the yolk running over everything. But I’m not particularly excited to try other methods of making eggs, like scrambled or poached, the experience was that underwhelming. But so far, I feel fine, so if I can actually digest my lunch without regretting it, I’ll be able to make my “famous” onion quiche again with those yellow onions!

And I’ll have to go back to La épicure for some 00 flour because I want to make myself some homemade fresh pasta, which, let me tell you, tastes like cooked glue if you don’t have egg in it!

I think my culinary life has changed. Giving it a few more hours before I celebrate, but the last time I had something super eggy, I knew almost immediately that I’d made a huge mistake, so I’m very optimistic!