When I’m not traveling around the country showing people how to fix an omelet in under a minute, I’m working with magazine food editors and writers in New York. I share the latest and greatest egg recipes as well as nutrition, versatility and, especially these days, affordability stories about eggs.

Once a year, my colleague Kristin Livermore, the American Egg Board’s Director of Marketing Communications, and I host these food editors for four days at a series of luncheons to thank them for all the egg dishes that have landed on their food pages over the past year. In 2009 alone, egg information and recipes were featured in a total of 170 issues of 31 different magazines! That’s a whole lotta eggs!

Every year, I look forward to chatting with my friends at the magazines and visiting the new, talked-about, and difficult to get into, restaurants! This year, we went Maialino, the first Italian restaurant to focus specifically and entirely on Roman trattoria fare vs. Italian food in general. It opened only a month ago to 5-star rave reviews – getting a table there now requires several weeks notice! Not for us. When I went to the restaurant to see if they would accommodate our group, I went with Tina Ujlaki, food editor of Food & Wine magazine. As you can imagine, she wields a lot of culinary clout around town – and we had no problem landing a table for nine for the following four days. Nice job, Tina!

Kristin and I asked the chef to create a different egg-based amuse bouche for the editors each day, a small pre-appetizer appetite stimulator that’s usually only one or two big bites. Chef Nick Anderer really delivered! Here are pictures and descriptions of the egg creations that kicked-off our lunches everyday….deeelliccciouusss!

Yolk filled Raviolo – An oversized raviolo (singular for ravioli) where the pasta dough is rolled out, with about ¼-cup of pureed ricotta cheese mounded on top. An indentation is made in the mound of cheese and an egg yolk is dropped inside. The top layer of the pasta is added carefully so as not to break the yolk. The top and bottom pasta is sealed together and the ravioli is dropped into boiling water for no more than 90-seconds. The raviolo is served on a pool of browned sage butter and garnished with a sage leaf. When it’s broken into with a fork, the yolk spills out into the butter and it all serves as the sauce. Wonderful!

Carbonara Frittata – A lot of eggs mixed with a lot of black pepper and pecorino cheese (the usual ingredients in pasta carbonara) and baked in a square pan. The finished frittata is cut into approximately 2-inch squares then each square is wrapped in a tissue-paper-thin slice of speck (a prosciutto-like ham) and a single blanched spinach leaf.

Insalata di Bottarga – Two kinds of eggs here: hen’s eggs and mullet roe. Blanched celery root sticks and the shavings from an ordinary celery stalk are plated beside a perfectly prepared soft-cooked egg half. The whole dish is covered with mullet roe that was compressed into a solid brick and shaved into tiny flakes.

Poached Egg on Chicken Broth – This is the simple one.  Fresh chicken broth served with Swiss chard and sea salt with a perfectly poached egg floating on top. Amazing!

They’re smart, kind, multi-skilled and a joy to be around. And, they write. Earlier this week, I met nine Mom bloggers in Phoenix and loved every one of them. The Moms were invited by America’s egg farmers to tour Hickman’s Family Egg Farm and learn a few egg cooking tips – and what a great time I had!

The trip was part of the Good Egg Project – which I’ve written about in the past – it’s an initiative by America’s egg farmers to educate people about where eggs come from and encourage them to join them in the fight against hunger.  For every pledge made to “eat good and do good every day” an egg will be donated to Feeding America, the nation’s largest hunger relief charity.  Already millions of eggs have been donated, delivering great nutrition, taste and versatility to those who can’t afford to buy them. By the way, if you haven’t done so already, visit the website now (www.GoodEggProject.org) and do your good deed today!

Back to the mom bloggers. All of these A-MAZE-ING women have a different approach to their blog. For example:  Anne Marie Nichols’ “ThisMamaCooks” is a health blog for foodies and their families; Anita Elmore’s “TheMamaZone” offers parenting and budgeting tips; Tonia Butterworth’s “AllAmericanMommy” includes a dedicated family recipe section and Ann Huddleson’s “HealthyTastyChow” focuses on healthier versions of the most popular foods. Combined, the nine moms are raising a total of 18 children, with 1 more kiddo on the way!

The tour kicked off with a delicious dinner with the Hickman family. My colleague, Chef Jeffrey Saad, and I were there to meet them all. Also, there was the sweetest, friendliest and hippest Registered Dietician I ever met, Mary Lee Chin. She was along to remind everyone of the dynamite nutrition that eggs deliver. We all had a wonderful time sharing stories and chatting about the day ahead!

When the bloggers returned from their farm tour the next day, Jeffrey and I demonstrated our recipes. I demonstrated three omelet variations: a classic filled omelet, America’s favorite Denver-Western omelet and an omelet wrapped in a whole wheat flour tortilla – with each recipe taking less than a minute to prepare!  Jeffrey demonstrated a toad-in-the-hole using a cookie cutter to make a fun, decorative hole in the bread to break an egg into. He also showed a bacon and egg grilled cheese breakfast sandwich and offered suggestions on how to tweak it slightly to add sophistication for adults! We not only showed them our egg dishes, we also turned over our pans, stoves and ingredients so they could try their hand at the dishes. What better way to illustrate the speed and ease of kid-friendly egg cooking? Not surprisingly, the moms were very deft at the fry pan. They approached the cooking stations with an air of confidence and enthusiasm that clearly demonstrated they knew their way around the kitchen!

Isn’t it great that moms from all over the country can meet in cyberspace? And the word “great” is an understatement.  It’s absolutely amazes me.  My children were raised with the help of only one resource, Dr. Spock. Today’s kids are influenced by moms who learn from other moms who live a real life in real time. That’s a far cry from Dr. Spock’s strictly clinical approach, for sure! It was clear to me that these young women were well educated and, maybe more importantly, very savvy. With the internet as their playing field, I know that they’ll ensure our next generation turns out as well-rounded and healthy as possible. And after this weekend, they are certain to be aware of where their food comes from and they’ll all live healthy, delicious lives with plenty of eggs on their menus.