Look at the label, it says it all — or almost all

See the big part of the label — it says that the eggs are best consumed before November 3, 2008.  (I bought these last week, but didn’t have time to write about them.)  It’s your normal good-until message.  Now, look at the label on the side of the box, the little one that says EXTRA until October 14, about 2 1/2 weeks earlier than the other date and about 9 days after the eggs were laid.

During those precious few days when the the eggs are extra-fresh (or extra-frais), they’re meant to be eaten soft or medium boiled or even raw.  After that, they become your regular very fresh eggs and, as the eggman said, that’s when you’d use them in a cake.

I bought the eggs and did three things with them:

While they were still extra, I made soft, runny coddled eggs (the photo is pre-coddle)

Then, when they were almost at the end of their extra-ness, I scrambled them

Finally, when they moved into “regular” territory, I made some chocolate-chip cookies and brought them to Isabelle Rozenbaum‘s photography atelier (a great class that I’ll report on soon)

As I was leaving the shop with my more-expensive, extra-frais eggs cradled in my basket, Mr. Eggman, perhaps thinking he’d been a little stern with me, said, “But of course we all know that the better the ingredients that go into something, the better it will be.”  Right again.