Fresh Eggs Daily® with Lisa Steele

Here's a Big Mac copycat recipe. Make it at home - but make it a pizza. I try to avoid eating fast food as much as possible, but who hasn't been on a road trip absolutely starving (or bored!), so you stop at McDonald's and grab a Big Mac.  I'll admit to that and so I definitely am familiar with the taste of a Big Mac burger with special sauce.

Sprouting microgreens for your chickens provides them a nutritious treat they'll love - in just 5 days! Microgreens have become popular in human cuisine over the last few decades and with good reason. They add not only a pop of green on the plate and a bit of delicious crunch, they're also packed with nutrients and anti-oxidants. But they're not only for people. Your chickens will love them too!

This variation on a traditional swirl bread has braided layers of cardamom, vanilla and sugar to sweeten it. If you've never had bread flavored with cardamom, you're in for a real treat! I love to substitute cardamom for recipes that call for cinnamon. I find the subtle flavor much more to my liking. 

These nine common herbs can help to support backyard chickens' immune systems and keep them healthy naturally. Herbs of all kinds provide some pretty amazing health benefits for both people and poultry!  But if you are specifically looking to add some herbs to your backyard chickens' diet to support their immune system and keep them as healthy as possible, you can't go wrong with these nine common herbs.

There’s something so satisfying about rolling and cutting out cookies. This basic sugar cookie recipe will be a holiday show stopper, but it's a nice everyday cookie as well.  When I was assembling recipes to be included in my first cookbook, I knew that I wanted to include a great sugar cookie recipe.  Sugar cookies are my husband's favorites (right after peanut butter cookies!), and not just for Christmas either. He loves a good frosted sugar cookie any time of the year! These cookies are actually very nice for Valentine's Day.

There are lots of reasons why chickens don't lay eggs. What you're feeding them could be one reason, but it's not the only one. And not for the reason you think. If you raise your own chickens and haven't heard the latest chicken feed conspiracy theories swirling around social media (and tiktok specifically) about flocks of perfectly healthy chickens suddenly not laying eggs, you're likely living under a rock. 

The avian flu can't be completely blamed for high egg prices at the supermarket. There are other factors coming into play. While it's true that eggs are really expensive  these days and the avian flu, otherwise known as bird flu, is sweeping the country again (still?), it can't be solely blamed for the current  record-breaking prices for store bought eggs . 

Whether you want to be sure you're choosing the freshest eggs, the most local eggs, or just want to understand the words and numbers on an egg carton, here's how to "crack the codes". The tops of egg cartons read like veritable billboards these days. Shouting things like "Free-Range",  "Vegetarian", "Hormone-free" and "Farm Fresh". Unfortunately most of these terms are misleading at best and meaningless at worst. 

The versatile strata is a great recipe that helps you use up holiday leftovers. The cousin to bread pudding, a strata is more eggy, less custardy, and usually savory instead of sweet. It’s a great recipe to have in your repertoire, although it’s not so much a recipe as a method to use up leftovers - especially after the holidays. Save the ends of your loaves of bread of all kinds (slightly stale is fine too!), uneaten dinner rolls, leftover vegetables, and meat. Pretty much anything that's in the fridge after a big holiday meal. Even stuffing and cranberry sauce can go into a strata. In addition, you’ll need lots of eggs, milk or cream, and some cheese (I love using a combination of all the odds and ends and bits of random types of cheese I find in the fridge). I call this my Holiday Strata because it's a great dish to throw together after a holiday when you find yourself with some creamed spinach, and a bit of turkey, maybe some broccoli or even mashed potatoes - not really en

Adding cayenne pepper to your chickens' diet in the winter has some pretty spectacular benefits. Like most birds both poultry and waterfowl, chickens do have a decent sense of taste , but with a few limitations. While they have taste receptors for "bitter", "salty" and "sour" like we do, they lack the receptors for "sweet" and "spicy". Same goes for ducks.

A lazy Sunday afternoon in Maine in the fall calls for a crisp, sparkling, cider-based cocktail while we enjoy the football game. This one I'm calling the Mimosa Bourbon Cider Shrub. If you've never had the cocktail version of a "shrub", you're in for a treat!  A shrub is technically a "drinking vinegar". It's basically a syrupy liquid created by mixing vinegar, usually apple cider vinegar, with fruit juices and sugar.  Sort of like a vinegar simple syrup.