Ova Easy Dehydrated Egg Review

So, like I said in my post yesterday, I was checking out my local big box sporting goods store and saw some dehydrated eggs in the freeze dried food section. The bag was only 4.5 oz and it claimed to contain the equivalent of a dozen eggs. I've been looking for something like this for a while. I'm not a fan of mountain house "camper meals". They just have way too much salt and they don't fill me up at all. I prefer to cook my own stuff. Eggs are a pretty essential ingredient in many of my favorite recipes. Dehydrated eggs are an obvious solution but every time I look at the ~$50 price tag on a #10 can of them I've always decided to hold off. At $3.99 these were not only a good price but they were in a convenient package that will fit nicely in my BOB. If they came in resealable packages they'd be absolutely perfect. Everything else that I carry is in plastic peanut butter jars, though, so one more won't hurt.

Anyway, I'm not about to carry it anywhere unless I know it tastes like eggs. So this morning I made an omelet. I used 6 scoops of the eggs and 12 tablespoons of water. That seemed to work out almost perfectly to 3 eggs. I also threw in some shitake mushrooms, tomatoes, ham, green onions and garlic.



Saute the ingredients in some olive oil before adding the egg.



Add the egg, flip it and then lay a slice of cheese (in this case my homemade cheese) across the top.



Fold it over onto a plate. I went ahead and sauteed some tomatoes in some hot sauce for the topping.



The texture was spot on. It cooked like an egg. I thought that it tasted like an egg, too, but when I went back to the store to pick up another package the guy stocking the shelf said that he'd tried it (just cooking scrambled eggs) and he thought that they were horrible. In an omelet I couldn't tell the difference between these and regular eggs. I thought that they were great and a bag immediately went into my BOB after tasting. Some people's minds are made up before they even try something new. If it's just too weird then they'll never like it. Other people taste things that most people don't ever seem to. Keep an open mind and get the ratio of egg to water correct and I think that you'll like it. From what I can tell 1 egg = 2 scoops of dried eggs + 3 scoops of water.

On the way there I stopped at a pawn shop and picked up a Buck 119 for $20. The sticker price was almost retail so I decided to just lowball the guy and see if he'd bite. He did. It's like new and the previous owner probably never did much more with it than try to cut paper to see how sharp the blade was.

When I got to the store I picked up that Condor Bushcraft 5" blade that I was talking about yesterday. That cost me $32. The review for it is coming up. It's got a nice, thick blade and the point isn't very pronounced. The blade is made of 1075 high carbon steel. It's got a pretty plain but comfortable walnut handle and it comes with a very nice leather sheath. At 10 1/2 ounces it should be a pretty good at chopping and I'm sure that it's beefy enough to handle battoning. It's got a fairly sharp, convex edge. From what I've read it's easy to sharpen. Some people want a blade that they can shave with. I have a baby face so being able to shave isn't much of a concern to me. I just want it to cut when I want to cut something. I have a feeling that it can take some punishment so I'll probably post up a few trials at some point.