Tips on Tuesday: Egg Recall

Have you heard about the egg recall? I keep listening to these dire reports and dutifully run to my refrigerator each night to check my eggs. I don't want to be the bad mom serving tainted food to my family.

I finally got fed up with the same thing being hashed over and over again and went to do a little checking. I found a wonderful and informative site called www.eggsafety.org.

The first thing I did was watch the video on the home page showing the new standards set in place by the government to keep eggs safe. While it was a bit dry, I did learn new information. Then I looked at the home page and saw the giant banner stating, "Voluntary Egg Recall Expanded: Less than One Percent of All U.S. Eggs Affected". Wait, did that say less than 1%?? Yes, it did. While it's important to let people know of the salmonella outbreak, have you heard any newscaster mention that it's less than 1% of U.S. eggs? I know I haven't. They keep making it sound like if I watch for just one more day, my eggs will be recalled, too. I feel like we've been wrapped into a cocoon of fear for a situation affecting less than 1% of us.

The Egg Safety site also had the most comprehensive and most up to date listing of recalled eggs out of all the sites I saw. If you go to this recall link, you can find the most current information about which brands and the lot numbers recalled.

Please take a minute to check your eggs and return or destroy any potentially tainted eggs. The other new news I learned was that if your egg yolk is runny when you crack open the egg, do not use it. Make sure the yolk is whole.

One safety tip I learned back in home ec is to always break your egg into a small bowl before adding to your mix. Then you know that if there's a problem with the egg, you haven't tainted the whole batch of whatever you are making. I'd like to suggest we all go back to cracking eggs into a separate bowl.

If you've heard other good egg tips, let us know.