Eggs

A breakfast of eggs is a perfectly good way to start the day, scientists now say. Provided, of course, that you don't overdo a good thing.Eggs got a bad rap in the '60s and '70s when it was believed that cholesterol was the major cause of coronary heart disease. Now, the emphasis is on saturated fat and total dietary fat. And eggs, in moderation, are being rediscovered for their protein and vitamin content.The American Heart Association recommends that adults who don't have elevated cholesterol limit their egg intake to four a week.

Every time someone gives advice on how to avoid salmonella food poisoning, he or she suggests substituting pasteurized eggs that have been heated to kill the bacteria rather than the troublesome raw eggs.Good advice. But pasteurized eggs just haven't been readily available for the home cook locally.The wait is almost over. Table Ready Egg, a pasteurized and homogenized whole egg product from Papetti's Hygrade Egg Products Inc. of Elizabeth, N.J., should be in the dairy cases of Baltimore's major chain supermarkets right after Labor Day, according to president Arthur Papetti.

A recent article announces the marketing, by a large food chain,of ''hand-gathered eggs from free-roaming hens.'' These eggs come from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, and are priced at a dollar more a dozen than other eggs. Apparently, the theory is that eggs from penned-up hens cost less to produce, and the consumer will like the idea of eating liberated eggs enough to pay the extra money.If this proves to be true, I wish that my aunt and uncle, who lived on a farm in Frederick County, could still be alive to cash in. They had the most deliriously happy hens you could imagine.

Even before there was an Easter, there were decorated eggs. Pagans used them in spring festivals. Many ancient cultures dyed eggs, exchanged them and generally considered them symbols of fertility. Their link to Easter is centuries old -- a simple yet colorful symbol of man's rebirth. To celebrate the season, The Sun asked a handful of people -- all with links to eggs -- to try their hand at decorating an egg or two for Easter. The results ranged from the traditional dye job (shades of the eternal Paas)

Easter's on its way. And you have some preparing to do around the house. So find an array of decorative, functional and, yes, adorable Easter items at area shops and online stores. Now get hopping. 1, 2, 3. At Williams-Sonoma at Towson Town Center, Cross Keys and Annapolis Mall and at www.williams-sonoma.com, you'll find the cutesy Chick Plates ($39 for four) and Chick Ramekins ($36 for four). The egg-shaped earthenware plates and ramekins -- each set includes an aqua, daffodil, rose and lime-colored item -- feature a tiny embossed chick and tiny chick tracks.

Baltimore's most famous peregrine falcons have hatched a new family on a 33rd-floor ledge of a downtown office tower, completing one of the city's local rites of spring.Felicity, the aerie's current female occupant, hatched three eggs over the weekend. Two more contain chicks that are peeping."They're calling, and we're expecting those to hatch at any hour," said John Barber. He is a former Smithsonian Institution ornithologist whose employment at USF&G Corp. made him the perfect choice to study and protect the birds after the first one settled in 1978 at the company's office tower at Lombard and Light streets.

When it comes to the latest salmonella scare, it's the eggs that are causing most of the confusion.By this time most Americans are aware that 30 percent or more of the country's poultry probably is contaminated with some salmonella bacteria and thus must be cooked thoroughly before eating, according to government estimates. But there aren't many people out there craving raw chicken.Not so with eggs. Raw and partly cooked eggs are essential ingredients in homemade mayonnaise, hollandaise, Caesar salad, ice cream, egg nog, mousse and meringue, not to mention those three-minute, soft-boiled eggs and the sunnyside-up ones with the runny yolks.

How do you boil an egg correctly? No matter what I do, I can never peel them easily. This question came from a colleague who buys her eggs fresh from the farmers' market. That is precisely why she has trouble peeling them: The fresher the egg, the harder it will be to peel. Young eggs are better for applications where you want a compact egg, as in frying and poaching. Older eggs, besides being better candidates for hard-cooking, also are fine for scrambling and using for baking. Most eggs make it to the market within a few days of being packed.

Q: Should I pay attention to my wife when she says that we should not order Caesar salads in restaurants?A: The easy answer is to tell you that you should always listen to what your wife says. She may not be right on every occasion, but it is true that Caesar salad dressing, made with raw eggs, has been responsible for many outbreaks of gastrointestinal illness due to contamination of eggs with Salmonella bacteria. These bacteria pose no threat when eggs are properly cooked, but Salmonella may infect the intestine if you eat foods containing raw or under-cooked eggs.

BOSTON - It's no surprise that the debate about cloning research has turned a degree or two from focusing on the moral status of the egg to the moral status of the egg donor. Up to now, we've treated eggs as if they were disembodied commodities. You go to a biology supermarket, pick up a dozen extra large and trundle them off to the research lab. But so far there's only one source for the hundreds of eggs needed for the stem cell research that uses cloned embryos: women. Egg donors are likely to undergo the same treatment as women do for in vitro fertilization.