Never Retire: The Price Of Eggs In Spain

If there was ever a clickbait headline to an article, this is it.

And some good old-fashioned food porn.

Go into the grocery store in Spain for a dozen of ecológico eggs and you’ll spend around €3. Skip the ecológico tag and you can get it down to about €2.

Or walk by one of the several Hueverias at the Russafa Market up the street and walk away with six ecológico eggs for €2.45.

I don’t know much about how they produce, label and sell eggs here other than to say you have tons of choices at affordable prices, whether you go the supermarket or local market route.

Usually you have less choice at the markets for food and drink in Spain, which, as I will expand on someday soon, is a good thing. But not where it matters on the staples that we all rely on. Things like eggs.

Every egg sold here has a code on it. The code tells you if the egg is organic, free-range, barn-raised or caged. The 0 here stands for organic. Then the country code. This one is from Spain. And the remaining digits are a farm identification number that allows the authorities to trace the egg back to the farm where it came from. After doing some research, I can confirm that the egg is from the Valencia province, but I was unable to track down the actual farm.

Wild.

And we didn’t put our eggs in the fridge because, in the EU, they’re not washed or hit with chemicals before they’re sold. This keeps the cuticle intact (I just learned that eggs, too, have cuticles), preventing bacteria from getting inside the egg. In the EU, there’s less concern over contamination of the shell because of stricter regulations at the farm to prevent salmonella. Go figure.

I am keeping today’s post free. But I hope you will decide to upgrade (if you already have, thank you!) to a paid subscription. Writing is not my side hustle. So you’re supporting my livelihood. And I appreciate it.

We’re on the 43rd consecutive day with a Never Retire newsletter post. I feel like there’s serious value in the cost of a subscription.

I try to not merely cover important and otherwise interesting practical/concrete and psychological/emotional issues around moving to another country and doing big things, particularly around midlife. I try to do it by telling the story of our experience as it unfolds and tying it to the larger themes of wanting to remain vibrant physically, mentally, personally and professionally into the second act of life and beyond. Of Never Retiring not only from work, but from life, which you see too many people do as they age (and when they’re not even that old!).

I received this message from a subscriber this morning. It made my day.

I comp all $100 founding memberships for life. So pay now and never pay again. And you can enter more than $100 at the time you subscribe. Whatever you do, thanks for the support, as the goal is to keep this thing going for the duration.

My wife and I are settling into life here in Spain. Now that we have our apartment, we’re starting to feel the flow forming. And lots of things are taking shape, from the meaningfully mundane to the meaningfully meaningful!

For example, my wife has been looking for a co-working space where she can work with ceramics. While she still co-owns a hair salon in Los Angeles, part of the point of this move is for her to transition to a full-time career as an artist. She’s super talented and smart/assertive enough to already have the ball rolling big time.

Before we even had our new fridge stocked, she found a studio to co-work in that’s only a few minutes from our apartment. Details as they develop, but this appears to be an ideal situation for her, in terms of being surrounded by talented and supportive people who can help her hone her already incredible skills and build a business. Stay tuned.

Everything here feels right and—more importantly—expected. We would be here whether Trump, Harris or Bruce Springsteen was President of the United States. We weren’t seeking an endless beach vacation. We looked at the type of lifestyle we prefer and determined that we can maximize it—

• in the day-to day

• in how we organize and move ourselves around

• in how we feel about our surroundings from logistical, social and, yes, political perspectives

—much better outside of America and, specifically and more importantly, in this incredible city, Valencia, Spain.

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This went longer than anticipated so I am saving something else I was going to write about for—probably—tomorrow. How I am going about and will go about learning Spanish. I know I need to step it up. But I also have to take things lightly and in stride.

I’ll expand on that using a pretty rude comment I received from a reader the other day. (I get those, too!).

I also want to expand on this idea of not merely Never Retiring from work, but Never Retiring from life. It’s critically important to the purpose of what I write about here day in and day out.