When you look to the left of your computer every morning and this is what you see.  Little old lady indicator number 56:  The salt and pepper packets came from your purse.

Alas, no yolk.

Breakfast is served.

Yesterday I “inked a deal” with two fraternity houses at the university here in town to sell my eggs through them. Eighteen, 19-year old guys plus a hot breakfast cooked by a house chef each morning equals a lot of huevos rancheros. And a lot of huevos rancheros means more money I can put toward June’s community college fund!!!

I may never have another unsold carton of eggs in my refrigerator again.

I have a feeling this will be a beautiful partnership. Frat houses, dens of progressive thought that they are (“Keg stand! Keg stand!”) have jumped on the locavorism bandwagon too, it seems. And why not?  Knowing where your food comes from is all the rage on campus around here.  I imagine these eggs will give the house chef something to casually mention to moms and dads when they come for parent’s weekend next month. Maybe knowing that Chauncy is eating farm fresh eggs every morning before class will make them feel the $52,000 per year tuition – not including what it costs to live in a fraternity — is actually worth it.

Now I’m thinking I can probably sell all 35 of my meat birds, slated for slaughter end of October, to the frat houses as well.

It’s going to be a profitable fall.

New mommy, chicken hustler and now….townie. My titles never stop growing.

I’m back in business! Just in time for Easter! Yippeee!

Please allow me to wallow in this proclamation for a moment because  it signifies the first official “farm problem” I’ve solved entirely on my own with no help or assistance from the husband.  That’s right!  Who’s Sasha Fierce?  Who’s the queen of delusional egomaniacs on the farm? Who can bring home the bacon eggs and fry em up in a pan? Me.

Not bad for a self-described halfwit who could barely light a match when I first moved down here.

How I did it:

• Supplementing their feed with calcium-rich oyster shells. This satisfies a key nutrient in the hens’ diet while making the shells nice and strong.

• Doping their drinking water with vinegar. The acid in vinegar helps with the absorption of calcium, according to (scientifically unfounded) farmer folklore

• Filling hollowed egg shells with disgusting mustard

• Moving the hens from the Hen Hut back to the coop, which features soft, rubberized laying boxes and gives the eggs a softer place to land (no cracked eggs).

• Allowing the hens to free-range again. Not sure how long this will last given I have to plant my garden, but it’s fine for now.

And for my next farm trick, I’m gonna sew me up a pair of wings made of chicken feathers and fly.

I can hardly believe it, but I’m at capacity with my egg selling business. I’ve already had four potential customers ask me to start selling them eggs this week, and I (unfortunately) had to turn them down because I don’t have any eggs left to sell. With 12 to 14 dozen going out the door each week, I’m booked! Solid! I barely have enough for Jake and myself.

The egg business: It’s lucrative. Low labor output (for me, that is….can’t speak for the hens). Too bad it’s not also a get-rich-quick venture.

I have a serious addiction to peanut butter and lately it’s been rearing its head in a crazy way. I’m chocking it up to the baby in my belly.

The problem with most commercial peanut butter ice creams is that they always taste like vanilla with some peanut butter globs thrown in. Which is fine, but it’s sort of like ordering a S’mores donut only to find the cake part of the donut is not S’mores at all, but a plain chocolate cake donut with S’mores flavored frosting. When what you really wanted was the cake itself to be made from S’mores bits. (And, yes, I speak from experience on that one. Clearly, I’ve never gotten over it.)

So I wanted to make an ice cream in which the peanut butter was evenly blended into the ice cream itself, so it tastes like you’re eating actual peanut butter ice cream, not vanilla with chunks of PB.

This recipe calls for cooking the egg yolks prior to mixing them into the ice cream. From a culinary perspective, I don’t think it’s necessary to cook eggs. I’m pretty sure the only reason recipes include this step is to prevent Salmonella.  Eggs are considered “safe” — bacteria dies — once heated to 160 degrees F.

But I don’t worry about salmonella. My chickens and their coop are very clean. It’s a closed flock — they’ve never come into contact with other chickens.  I collect eggs 2-3 times a day so the eggs don’t have a chance to sit around. I’m comfortable adding raw eggs to uncooked recipes. If you buy eggs from me, you can feel comfortable too.

Still, I’ve never made ice cream using cooked eggs so I wanted to give it a go to see if there’s any difference in taste. Conclusion: There’s not.

This ice cream was so well blended it was like eating peanut butter gelato — there were no massive, gooey PB chunks to contend with —with little flecks of semisweet chocolate thrown in at the very end. Enjoy.

The recipe, using cooked eggs:

• Place 6 egg yolks in a small bowl. Whisk together and set aside.

• In a medium saucepan, heat 3 cups heavy cream, 1 cup whole milk, 1 tablespoon vanilla extract and 1 cup light brown sugar over low heat until the sugar is dissolved.

• Remove the pan from the heat and stir 2 tablespoons of the warm cream mixture, stirring constantly into the beaten egg yolks. Slowly add the yolk mixture to the warm cream mixture, stirring constantly so the eggs don’t cook.

• Return the cream mixture to the stove and cook over low heat for about 5 minutes, stirring constantly (very important or the yolks might scramble). Remove from the heat. Pour the ice cream mixture into a large bowl and refrigerate until completely cool.

• Pour the chilled ice cream into an ice cream maker. Turn it on and add 1 cup smooth peanut butter in globby little fingerfuls. (If you add the PB in one mass it won’t blend properly; you end up with vanilla ice cream featuring PB chunks, which we’re trying to avoid.) Process for 25 minutes.

• Just before the machine is finished, add 1/2 cup grated semisweet chocolate.

• Transfer the ice cream to a freezer-safe container and freeze an additional 2 hours before serving.

Yesterday I smashed an egg in my purse.

What was a raw egg doing in my purse? Because I didn’t have anywhere else to put it, duh, and I had to carry a bunch of stuff in from my car. (Yes, there was a stray egg in my car.) So I put the egg in my Gap carry-all and promptly forgot it was there…..until I reached for my wallet later that night and put my hand in a big pile of cold egg snot.

The eggy mucous got all over everything: my Blackberry, checkbook, notebooks, my egg “ledgers”, my Coach wallet, the zipper of which is still sealed shut from egg glue.

Let this be a warning to you, egg eaters: Don’t walk around with raw eggs in your purse or pockets. Your Blackberry will never feel the same.