Guam Day 68 - Which Came First, the Chicken, or the Egg?

 4/21/2022 - I wanted to revisit this question of which came first here on Guam, a pickup from day 5 post. We picked up these high quality eggs to make some fried rice here at home. Joan has built herself quite the fusion of a recipe that feels like Chamorro meets yellow Indian Rice. This means it does have Spam, Garlic Spam, Joan was elated to find this in the supermarket, in the ingredient list along with Turmeric, Cumin and some secret additives. The Fried Rice was surprisingly good for one of her many creative one stove cooking endeavors. 

Ok, so dinner was good, you get the idea, back to the eggs. Did any of you see the coded numbers and letters on the side of this egg carton? Any idea what that means? DOP stands for Date of Package, then followed by the date. Yes, you read correctly these eggs were packaged, not laid, on March 28th, almost a month ago. Joan and I were excited to find these, generally the eggs you find here on Guam are dated with a packaged on date of 2 or 3 months back. Like I said, everything here comes in on a boat from somewhere, the eggs, the milk, sometimes even the bread, you get the idea. 

One of my early mess-ups here on the island was purchasing a package of eggs from the supermarket without looking at the date. Joan had explicitly said do not buy the eggs if they are greater than a month out. Of course in my thick husband skull of mine, two weeks later I had forgotten the these words of caution, and Joan came home after I had shopped for eggs to find some that were 3 months old. What is most interesting to me about this specific instance is normally Joan will eat anything that is in the pantry or refrigerator that is out of date. She had 2 years in the peace core in Panama, food out of date was how you stayed alive, she would say. When it comes to eggs though that were packaged 3 months ago, she was "outie" as she would say in her words. So a young husband of 4 weeks time got scolded for not listening, tail between his legs, had to go out and find a second batch of eggs that were "more fresh". Not my brightest move, but I hope it all awards you with some laughter.

Eggs are another one of those quirky things on Guam. We have talked about how many chickens there are on the island, but yet you go to the store and have to buy eggs that are 1 month old packaged somewhere not on Guam. This brings me back to my question, which came first on Guam, the Chicken or the Egg? I must say I still believe it is the chicken, as the egg came 1 month too late, and never hatched due to being consumed by the islanders. So, if you do make it out this way to Guam, or to another stranded remote island, my word of caution is to check the date on the eggs. Otherwise you just never know what you are going to get!