Among the colorful characters in MacDonald's memoirs were Ma and Pa Kettle, the quintessential country bumpkins. These days, the perception of Washingtonians has risen somewhat in the eyes of the world from the Kettles, but sometimes I am convinced that beneath our 21st-century airs, we are still a bunch of chicken-raising country hicks at heart. My neighbor, for example, works as a fashion model. She flies off every other week to be photographed wearing designer jeans and tank tops for various magazines and catalogues. But at home, she is more likely to be found in cut-off shorts, pulling eggs out from under one of the chickens or geese that make her yard their home.

Another one of my neighbors is a caterer. To meet her on the street or in the supermarket, you might assume that she is another sophisticated Bainbridge Island professional person. But underneath the façade, she is pure Kettle. She and her daughter share the responsibilities of keeping a little flock of chickens in their back yard, and she threatens, pretty convincingly, to kill any raccoons or foxes that dare to harass the "girls."

A third neighbor allows chickens the run of a place across the road from us, and intermittently, she puts out a hand-painted sign that says simply "Eggs." On those days, we are tacitly invited to exchange a couple of dollars for a dozen eggs we will find in a cooler down her driveway.

Even more colorful, though, than the neighbors who raise these chickens are the eggs they sell. The araucana eggs are the blue-green color of a morning sky. Others are varying shades of coppery beige. The goose eggs are not-quite-white, mother-of-pearl-shelled specimens about twice the size of an average supermarket egg. Inside, their yolks are even larger than the shell would suggest — so large that they take up almost all the space, leaving little room for whites. And such a deep, dark yellow are these goose-egg yolks that every time I crack one, I find myself staring, hypnotized by the sheer beauty of the things.

For folks without Ma and Pa Kettle neighbors, there's a store in Pike Place Market that sells a variety of off-beat eggs. At the Pike Place Creamery, Nancy Nipples, self-proclaimed "Head Milk Maid" of the market, keeps a supply of araucana eggs, goose eggs, natural brown eggs and even tiny speckled quail eggs, almost too cute to crack.

I first encountered quail eggs when I was visiting relatives in Texas. My uncle took me to a neighbor who wanted to meet the cookbook author. Our hostess had fried up several of her quail for the main course, and her daughter prepared a platter of tiny deviled quail eggs by way of an appetizer. Years later, when I was the executive chef at a high-end restaurant in Seattle, I often served quail eggs topped with caviar. And every time, I thought of the little girl in Texas who first introduced me to the possibilities these little eggs offer.

It's been only recently, though, that I stopped thinking of eggs as primarily an ingredient and began appreciating the joys of eggs in and of themselves: fried or scrambled, in simple omelets, and in that old workhorse of the home kitchen, a classic egg salad.

Made with full-flavored, organic eggs and a bright, confetti-like combination of diced red pepper, onion, celery and parsley, this recipe, loosely based on one from Cook's Illustrated magazine, is a winner. Who knew egg salad could be so incredibly good?

Greg Atkinson is a contributing editor for Food Arts magazine and a culinary consultant. He can be reached at greg@northwestessentials.com. Harley Soltes is a Seattle Times staff photographer.