Eggs

Hens are the type of chicken that lay eggs. The older a hen gets, the larger her eggs become!

It takes a hen 24-26 hours for her to produce just one egg. In the US , we eat about 5.5 BILLION dozen eggs every year – that takes 240 million hens! Wow, that's a lot chickens!

You may wonder why some eggs are white and some are brown. Hens with white feathers and earlobes lay white eggs and hen with red feathers and earlobes lay brown ones.

Did you ever see an egg sitting on a counter and wonder if it was fresh or hard-boiled? You can spin it to find out. If it wobbles, it's raw, and if it spins easily, it's fresh.

Spinach

Spinach has traveled a long way to make it to the US. It is native to Persia (now known as Iran), was taken to China and in the 7th century, and then to Europe in the 12th century. Spinach finally arrived in the US in 1806. Wow, that's a long journey!!

Do you ever wonder why sometimes your spinach is flat and sometimes it's curly? Well that's because there are actually 3 different kinds of spinach leaves. "Savoy" is curly leaf spinach, "semi-savoy" has a slightly curly leaf, and "flat" has a smooth leaf.

When you see the word "Florentine" in a recipe, it means that recipe contains a significant amount of spinach. The word Florentine comes from the Italian city, Florence, the hometown of Catherine de Medici (a very famous historical figure who married the king of France in the 16th century). She loved her spinach!

Guess who grows the most spinach in the world? It's not the US (we only grow 3%).
It's China! They grow 85% of the world's spinach!