Quail eggs taking off
CANADA - Arnie and Shirley Morris know what it means to put all their eggs in one basket.What started in 1987 as a hobby with a few tiny speckled eggs carefully driven from Vancouver in an insulated box has hatched into a home-based business producing quail eggs, a specialty food item.
The couple keeps 5,000 of the small exotic birds which supply 75,000 quail eggs each month to major grocery stores and Asian outlets across Western Canada.
"It's amazing. Arnie's uncle was raising quail in Vancouver and when he suggested we give it a try I said 'You're crazy. Who would buy a quail's egg?' " recalls Shirley.
She was talking during an interview at the couple's 30-acre setup, Bry-Conn Developments, in Ardrossan, about 25 km east of Edmonton.
As she soon discovered, lots of people are buying quail eggs, which are about a quarter the size of a chicken egg.
They're a traditional ingredient in Chinese and Japanese cuisines where they're cooked in a variety of dishes such as soup, stews and desserts. They also pop up in sushi, a food that has become increasingly mainstream in recent years.
Source: Edmonton Sun
14 October 2005
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