I think Araucana eggs are one of the most beautiful foods in the world. Apparently I'm not alone in this adoration — Martha Stewart named an entire collection of paints after these eggs.

Araucana eggs are not any more nutritious than other eggs, nor do they taste different (except that they're usually exceedingly fresh). They do anything a normal egg does, but with a little more style. My favorite way to serve an Araucana egg is hard-boiled in its gorgeous blue-green shell with a small bowl of sea salt on the side, à la Nigella Lawson.

I've been buying my Araucana eggs the last couple of weeks from Farm and Granary, a certified-organic egg farm in the Hudson Valley. They sell "rainbow eggs" which are a combination of blue-green, pinkish beige and brown eggs from Araucana, Red Star, Buff Orpington, Australorp, Silver-Laced Wyandottes and a smattering of other chicken breeds.

It's often said that eggs are nature's most perfect food, so these must be the über-perfect specimens. The only drawback to rainbow eggs I have found so far is that it brings out a greedy and petty side of me. I'm usually completely giving when feeding my friends and family, but when I have these eggs in the house, I hoard the blue Araucanas for myself and sneak the brown eggs into everyone else's food.