Eggs Etouffee, Anyone?

The comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda cooked fried eggs for the Colonel's breakfast yesterday morning. 

Remarkable, why, you ask?

Well, if you were ever lucky enough to have visited Eegeebeegee -- capital of the Tallahatchie Free State -- and were even luckier to have been invited into the Colonel's humble abode without first being challenged for the security countersign at gunpoint, you would have undoubtedly noted the sign prominently posted at the entrance to one of the Colonel's Lady's least favorite rooms:

"The only reason I have this kitchen is it came with the house."

Even more remarkable is the consumption of a breakfast meal by the Colonel. 

Unless you count his ritual morning-kick-starting three mugs of coffee.

And, given the strength and thickness of the Colonel's morning joe, one might very well count it so.

The Colonel, and spare him the lecture on it being the most important meal of the day, has never been much of a breakfast eater. 

Unless there was chocolate cake or a slice of pie left over from the night before. 

However, that may be changing.

As the thousands of you who regularly imbibe of the literary libations ladled out liberally, if irregularly, on posts hereon will remember, the Colonel has a burgeoning hen herd extant upon the domesticated portion of his vast, mostly wild, holdings here at the shallow northern end of deep southern nowhere. 

Said hen herd has grown from an inauspicious beginning wherein the hen (note singular form of the female fowl noun) was greatly outnumbered by roosters.  The comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda has been relieved of all chick-sexing duties following that near derailment of the entire egg-production enterprise.  The Colonel's hen herd now numbers fourteen, and one cock-eyed top-kick rooster -- Smedley.   

And one side-kick rooster, Mason, who seems to be growing into his role as -- ahem -- heir apparent to the duties and responsibilities of top-kick rooster.

Did you know that a chicken hen lays an egg..., every day?

A dozen + fresh eggs are collected daily from the Colonel's critter-proof chicken coop.

And, given that the investment cost in chicken feed and construction materials for the Colonel's critter-proof chicken coop make each egg worth just slightly more than their weight in silver bullion, not one egg goes to waste.  

The Colonel is fast becoming the Benjamin Buford Blue of eggs.  Much like Forrest Gump's shrimp-cook savant army buddy, the Colonel knows all the different ways to prepare eggs for human consumption.  

Fried eggs.

Scrambled eggs.

Poached eggs.

Boiled eggs.

Two-egg omelets.

Three-egg omelets.

Fried eggs on toast.

Rocky Balboa eggs.

Papal eggs (Eggs Benedict)

Deviled eggs.

The Colonel's cholesterol count has spiked a good hundred points, but at least the cookware he bought his curiously not-so-appreciative bride for their 35th wedding anniversary is finally getting used.