Eggs and Cheese

It is a long time since everybody living in the country had a coop of laying hens in the orchard, and foxes and broodiness were genuine threats to the family egg supply. Eggs, packed in their own beautiful fragile shells, are abundant, and farms with a quarter of a million chickens apiece keep the poor birds laying night and day. Luckily, although one may not approve of chickens being treated as egg-laying units, the massive production methods and subsidies do mean that eggs stay comparatively cheap, and therefore it is worth being lavish with them; they are such an incredibly unwasteful way of handing out first-class protein, and after all, a really perfect soufflé is just as much of a treat as a fresh salmon trout or a fillet of beef, and is very much easier to make than people suppose.