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Comment by butterfi | Hacker News Reader

This is a great example of how we're losing track of information. Using older eggs is a trick well-known to my wife, who learned it from her mother. It seems more and more lately that we're re-discovering the wheel. Just a few weeks ago I was reading somewhere how a weaver had un-earthed a forgotten weaving technique through Google's book project.

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In this case, the information was lost because it was no longer needed. The eggs in supermarkets already where 'old eggs' and so any egg you picked up was already ready to be used. Now that there is a trend toward 'farm-fresh' or even raising your own chickens in your backyard, the information is necessary again, but there are people that don't even realize that the information existed.

I didn't figure this all out until we got our own chickens.

I even threw out an egg because it had been sitting outside for over a day. I didn't know at the time that a farmer has 30 days to sell his eggs. That the grocery store has another 30 days to sell the egg. And on top of that, you still have another 3 months before the egg actually goes bad.

Incredible! Even more incredible -- and this only applies to farm fresh eggs -- there is an anti-bacterial layer around the egg.

I am pretty impressed with eggs.

My parents have had eggs for decades and we always threw then away at the end of 3 weeks after they had been collected.

I might find myself doing the same soon, we're getting a little sick of eggs....

But I hope they didn't throw them out because they thought they went bad.

Indeed, they even cite McGee.

I'd love to see that weaving article if there's any chance you can find it.

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