One of the joys of travel is discovering and trying new things and this includes new foods as well. For most, the new food experience is found in restaurants. When traveling one has to eat out unless they are staying with friends or in a timeshare (timeshare freebies) where they can store and prepare their own food.

Sometimes the new food experience is nothing more than a common food or food preparation that the traveler hasn't tried before.

Since vacations, or business trips with an expense account, are a time for new things it is only logical that one tries a new item on the menu.

This is especially true of business travelers who try to compensate for being alone and away from home by splurging with the expense account to try something new and more expensive that what they are usually comfortable spending when using their own money.

Then there is the exotic. Thanks to globalization and modern transportation common food dishes from far away places are now readily available almost anywhere.

One only has to look in the yellow pages or do a search of local restaurants online to find restaurants specializing in either regional foods in large nations like the U.S. or foreign foods from almost any nation.

As if restaurants specializing in foreign foods were not enough, bookstore shelves are overflowing with cookbooks containing instructions for making almost any kind of food on earth and, more than likely, the ingredients needed can be found in any large supermarket.

On a recent Saturday, the only day of the week which my wife and I both have off from work, my wife and I decided to get out and enjoy the nice spring weather. At her suggestion we headed up to Picacho Peak, an small mountain about 40 miles up the Interstate from our home in Tucson, Arizona, and revisit the Rooster Cogburn Ostrich Ranch which is located at the base of Picacho Peak.

After spending a couple of hours viewing, feeding and taking pictures of the ostrich, donkeys, deer and lorikeets we decided to leave and, passing through the gift shop on the way out, my wife suggested that we buy an ostrich egg. Ever on the lookout for something new, I agreed and, after parting with $15, we left with my wife carrying a three and one half pound ostrich egg which was to be our dinner that night.

According to the cashier, Ostrich Eggs taste much like chicken eggs but are a little sweeter as well as lighter and cook up fluffier. According to her, French Chefs prefer ostrich eggs to chicken eggs for making their pastries because the ostrich eggs are lighter and fluffier.

Ostrich eggs can be prepared in any way that chicken eggs can be prepared and can be substituted for chicken eggs in recipies when you remember that one ostrich egg is the equivalent of about 2 dozen chicken eggs. If using an ostrich egg in place of chicken eggs in a recipe you should substitute the ostrich egg for chicken eggs by using 1/4 cup of ostrich egg for each chicken egg.

An ostrich egg will remain fresh, either in the shell or in a sealed container, from 4 to 6 weeks when properly refrigerated. Thus, provided you keep the contents of the egg in a sealed container and refrigerated an ostrich egg, once opened, can be used as needed over a 4 to 6 week period rather than having to be consumed all at once.

Ostrich are descendants of the dinasaurs which makes their eggs similar to those of the dinasaurs. The shell of the ostrich egg is the thickest of any egg shell in the world. They are tough and feel almost like plastic. While thicker and harder than the shells of chicken eggs, ostrich eggs are still fragile and are probably silghtly easier to break than the plastic egg shells that one can buy in stores at Easter.

In addition to their large size and thickness, ostrich eggs have a shiny enamal like sheen to them. This is because, after laying the egg, the female ostrich applies a coating to the shell that gives it that sheen and enamal like appearance. The coating is designed to seal the egg to prevent bacteria from entering it.

In addition to eggs, the gift shop also sold empty egg shells - whole shells with a 1/2 hole in the tip from which the egg yolk and white had been removed. These empty shells sold for $10 while the entire egg sold for $15.

In order to enable us to protect our investment in the shell - not only the most expensive part of the egg but, with Easter coming up, it would be nice to save and decorate it as a center piece on our table for Easter Dinner - all of the eggs available for sale had had their tips scored, a process whereby someone at the giftshop had carved a half inch circle on the tip which weakened that area making it possible for the purchaser to knock out the circle with the handle of a table knife or other similar blunt object so as to be able to empty the contents without destroying the shell.

Returning home from our trip we decided to use whatever we had in the refrigerator to make the omlet. Unfortunately, the only omlet ingredients on hand, other than our newly purchased egg, were some tomatoes, cheddar cheese and onion.

While my wife prepared the other ingredients, I cut through the outer and inner membranes of the egg and then inserted the knife into the center of the egg and used it to stir the yolk so that it could be poured out through the hole with the egg white.

Once I had mixed the yolk, I proceeded to shake the contents into a large mixing bowl. After adding the oninon my wife had chopped along with some salt and pepper, I stirred the mixture together.

I then poured some olive oil into a large pan and then poured the egg mixture into it and turned on the burner on the stove top. Because the one ostrich egg was the equivalent of two dozen regular chicken eggs, I substituted a large round baking pan that was 12 inches in diameter and 3 inches deep instead of using one of our regular frying pans.

Ostrich eggs are lighter and fluffier than chicken eggs and appeared to rise some while cooking.

When it came time to add the chopped onions, tomatoes and cheese and fold the, now thickened, egg mixture in half to cover the half containing the filling, I discovered that the cooked egg mixture was an inch thick. It did not fold very well but we did manage to get a decent omelet.

While the omelet cooked, my wife proceeded to clean the shell so that it could be saved.

Following the oral instructions provided by the cashier at Rooster Cogburn's Ostrich Ranch, my wife mixed some chlorine bleach with water, poured it into the egg, shook the egg, poured out the bleach mixture and rinsed the inside of the egg a couple of time with water from the tap. She then set it in a bowl so that it could dry without having it fall and break.