---

I once read somewhere in a magazine:
If you live in the country, pets just happen.
I laughed when I read it, and remember it to this day because it is so true. In the country, there are drop-off dogs and cats, barn cats that multiply, bunnies in the fields, birds with broken wings, turtles, frogs - you name it - in the country, it can easily end up as a pet.

Yes, if you live in the country, pets just happen.
And likewise,
If you live in the country, eggs just happen.
Since moving here, I have never had less than two dozen eggs in my refrigerator - and I very rarely ever buy eggs. As a matter of fact, these are fresh eggs, some of them organic eggs. The come with green, brown, sometimes mottled shells, and all cook and taste wonderful.

We just don't eat eggs all that often.

So, when I get to about three or four dozen eggs lining the shelves, I make pickled eggs.

I never really had a recipe. The first time I thought of making them, I just asked around. It seems everyone has a pickled egg recipe preference, and they are all varied and different.

But rarely, does anyone actually make them.

I have three main ingredients, beets with juice, vinegar, and onions. How much I add of each depends directly on how much of them is available in the cupboard at the time.

And while picking up vinegar at the store today, I couldn't remember if I used distilled or cider vinegar. I bought distilled, and then came home to find a half-gallon of cider vinegar on the bottom shelf of the pantry.

So, a few quarts of distilled, half-gallon of cider vinegar, two cans of sliced beets with juice and two onions just became the marinade for a dozen eggs - and I'm boiling more.

The worst thing, I think, about pickled eggs is, like with wine, you have to wait for them to get good.

I start these eggs today, and it'll be a good week before the juice makes it halfway through the whites, and another two weeks or more before it even gets close to the yoke.

So every day, you open the refrigerator to see a big gallon jar of soaking eggs that you can't eat yet.

It's about more than I can handle...
How do you think I know how far the juice gets in a few days, a week, two weeks?

Because by the time they get really good, there's only one or two left.

;O)

So, do you have a pickled egg recipe? If so, share it! I've got more eggs boiling now.

---

Want to know more about DeLaHaye? Visit her web site at WV Travelers , or her online store at Impecunious Impressions, or read her weekly column at The Calhoun Chronicle.