I can’t recall whether the catchy advertising campaign of “Go to work on an egg” happened in New Zealand or whether it was during my time in Britain, but it’s surely not a bad idea two or three times a week to start the day with a good breakfast that includes an egg.

Of course, eggs are much more versatile than that and you can use them in cooking for delicious lunches or suppers – think toad-in-the-hole or Welsh rarebit – and baking just wouldn’t be the same without them. No eggs…no pavlova!

Nutritionally, eggs are a power-pack of so many vitamins, minerals and protein, a particularly good source of B vitamins. Eggs also provide worthwhile quantities of vitamin A, essential for normal growth and development, Vitamin E to aid heart health and guard against some cancers and Vitamin D, necessary for good strong bones. Importantly in New Zealand, eggs are rich in iodine, as well as phosphorous and also contain iron and zinc. They’re low in calories – only 78 per medium egg – and relatively low in saturated fat. Dollar for dollar, they’re a jolly good buy.

For more information on the health benefits of eggs – including why eggs have come back into favour with the medical fraternity which, for so long, told us to limit intake because of dietary cholesterol, go to http://www.eggs.org.nz

Meantime, here’s a selection of our favourite recipes for eggs or using eggs. Almond Croissant Bread and Butter Pudding, Spinach Omelet, The Perfect Poached Eggs with Béarnaise Sauce and Bacon On, Tuscan Egg and Bacon Pies, Fragrant Smoked Tuna Kedgeree, Sweet Kumara and Chinese Chive Frittata, Smoked Salmon and Creamed Egg Roll, Sumptuous French Toast.

The best known egg of all, of course, was the anthropomorphised Humpty Dumpty…whose unfortunate tumble off his wall and the subsequent inability of all the king’s horses and men to restore him, has long been a nursery rhyme favourite. Originally, like so many such verses, this was a riddle, to which the answer, of course, was an egg.

However, Humpty Dumpty was also a name applied to a short round person of no real intelligence; or to a boiled ale and brandy drink from the end of the 17^th century. Another atheory muses that “Humpty Dumpty” was a powerful cannon mounted on a church tower in Colchester, East Anglia, to defend the Royalist-held city against siege by the Parliamentarian army in 1648. The tower was hit by the Roundheads, blowing off its top and sending the cannon crashing to the ground, so it was no surprise that the infantry and the cavalry were unable to put Humpty together again!