Welcome to Friday Food Reviews where I will be covering a different food or product each week and looking at… what are they?  where do they grow, what can we substitute them for in a recipe, are they safe to eat, how to store them, how to use them, cook them, anything connected to that food. or product..all the why’s and the wherefores…it will, of course, be mainly my own opinion or a known fact…good or bad…there may even be a tried and tested recipe…or three…

This week it’s…Mayonnaise…

Mayonnaise...has a thousand uses…as a sandwich spread or dipping sauce for raw veggies.it can be added to Sriracha? Chopped pickles?  Curry powder? The world is your oyster, prawn cocktail… Old Bay, smoked paprika, any kind of citrus, Dijon mustard, or chopped anchovies…a mayonnaise cake, on your burger…potato salad…the list is endless…

Do you make your own? or do you buy a jar with your weekly shopping?

Commercially made mayo won’t spoil quickly since some ingredients help this product stay edible for weeks…not so a homemade mayo but at least you control the sugar and salt content…

The shelf life of unopened ready-made mayo is quite long, often more than a year, since it contains long-lasting ingredients and preservatives. Always check a best-by date before buying this product, and use it in the period when it retains the best quality.

However, it will even last two to three months past that date in most cases. No one can tell you how long precisely because it depends on its quality and ingredients and seasoning it contains. Often, you can use it at least a month or two past the date…that scares me as to the content of the mayo…does it scare you?

Did you know? Last year, Americans bought approximately 177 million gallons of mayonnaise — enough mayo to fill 268 Olympic size swimming pools or two-thirds of the Empire State Building…Wow, that’s big business…

Although ready-made mayo uses pasteurised eggs those eggs have been through a process…The process to make most mayonnaise begins with the chicken (not the egg) in labs where teams of highly trained geneticists design hens best suited for laying eggs…my alarm bells are now continuously ringing…

That meant that on went my sherlock hat and the research began…it is shocking…our chooks roam free and they help keep the pests down in the vegetable patch it is a continuous circle each plant and animal has their place in providing the food we eat…which for most us is too much…hence the obesity, bad teeth, lifestyle diseases and the increase in cancers…

Back to the mayo...have I encouraged(scared) you into making your own mayo yet?

The chooks…in brief…most egg-laying hens are hatched in hatcheries, not on farms…the eggs will remain in incubator machines for about twenty-one days before hatching the chicks that will eventually lay the eggs that become mayonnaise.

Any pictures you have in your mind’s eye of a hen sitting on her eggs are a far cry from the truth…we have to forage for our farm eggs under bushes although you do get to know the favoured places for egg-laying it is the way my father and his father my grandad collected our eggs…a far cry from this…

Do you still want to pick up that jar of mayo from the shelf?…unless it’s eggless of course…

Because male chicks cannot lay eggs and do not become the chickens we eat, they serve no purpose in modern agriculture. They are therefore killed by a process called maceration…in layman’s terms, they are fed through a high-speed grinder!

Beak trimming,” according to the United States Department of Agriculture, “is a routine husbandry procedure practised in the poultry industry to prevent feather pecking and cannibalism.”…my thoughts if I was confined in such a small place would I not resort to this…?

This well-oiled machine keeps turning and churning out your mayo..in the U.S alone Americans purchased an estimated 1.4 billion pounds of mayo, according to market research company Euromonitor International, coming out to about 4.25 pounds, or just over half a gallon, per person…people spent $2 billion on mayo, more than on any other condiment including ketchup…no wonder its big business and a profitable one for the manufacturers…

I love eggs…but unless I see those hens running free…I don’t trust labels and statements on boxes…it has been proven time and time again that they are just words to appease the buying public… it’s not me being cynical its the stark reality!

I am not and never will be vegan…I believe in a balanced diet it is what and how our bodies are designed however if I cannot source eggs that I know to be from hens who are running free then any mayo I make will be eggless…Does eggless mayo taste the same…I am asking you?… Yes, you …have you tried eggless mayo either from a jar or made it yourself? I would like to know which milk you use and what seasoning you use for the perfect eggless mayo…I mean who doesn’t love mayo with chips?

But either way, you can still make it at home in just a few minutes with lemon juice, an egg yolk, salt, dry mustard, and oil, and it will taste SO GOOD. If you want to know more about the eggs you’re making it from, buy them at a local farmers market where you can ask the person selling them about the chickens they came from…it is always a good move to make friends with your local farmer(if) you have one…

Thank you for joining me today…Do you make your own mayo with egg or egg free?