Egg Dishes and Pancakes

For anyone like myself who has pristine memories of early childhood delight at going expectantly to the hen coop and finding a still warm, fresh-laid egg on its cosy bed of straw, a visit to an Auvergnat farmyard has a powerful mnemonic effect. Here are a dozen or so plump and healthy-looking hens, escorted by one or more macho cocks, freely going about their business of pecking grit (which they need to grind their food in their gizzards), feeding on what the farmer gives them (grain, meal, mashed nettles, household leftovers), using their strong feet to scrabble for grubs on and around the manure heap, or setting off for an excursion along the hedgerows and in the fields in search of other insect and vegetable fare. When they wish to roost, they return to the coop or climb ramps into little compartments built into the side of the bam or pigsty. Compare the fortunate lot of these birds with that of their battery-reared cousins, known in the poultry trade as ‘layers’, who spend their wretched two-year lives, debeaked and declawed to prevent cannibalism, eating ‘grain, heavily dosed with egg-encouraging additives and antibiotics, moving by them on conveyor belts’ (Margaret Visser, in her excellent Much Depends on Dinner).