Getting actual free range eggs is not as easy as you might think. The terms "free range" and "cage-free" actually have limited legal meaning. Often times "free range" means 80,000 chickens crammed into a barn on top of each other, with a tiny door leading to a patio that can hold 100 chickens. And stories abound of unscrupulous farmer's market vendors simply taking grocery store eggs and selling them as their own.
A good way (I think) to spot "real" eggs is to see if they are irregular. Unlike grocery store eggs which will all look identical, like a Pringles potato chip, real eggs will have specks, different colors, varied shades. The above eggs came from the Beverly Hills farmer's market. The top one is one of their "blue" eggs, which actually does appear blue in real life.
In the grocery store, there are almost no genuine quality eggs. A good website that rates eggs is called Cornucopia Institute. http://www.cornucopia.org/organic-egg-scorecard/ There, you can see eggs rated "5 eggs":
And eggs rated "1 egg."
A surprising 1 egg rating is Horizon Organic. On the packaging, they have happy dancing cows and birds, but they appear to in reality be eggs, cheese, milk, and butter produced by a giant agribusiness. The term "organic" is also not legally binding, unless you have "USDA Organic" on there.
The only locally available five star egg appears to be Vital Farms.
These cost double the eggs you'd buy at Ralph's, but hopefully it is worth it. They certainly look like "real" eggs, and you even get a report on which flock your eggs came from.
