xxchef

Your recipes are just a part of your business' worth. Buildings and or leases, tools & equipment, vehicles, inventory, accounts receivable, capitalization accounts, and customer account lists are some other assets you can consider selling when you liquidate. There is a certain simplicity and elegance to selling the whole as a "turn-key" business but it sounds like you've already ruled that out so parting-out the various assets is what's left. After you and your partner decide who wants to keep which assets (if any), and after deciding if you are ever likely to want to start the business up again you can then decide which assets should be offered for sale to outside parties and at what price. I'm now running a small business where we offer 3-day hands-on workshops where we take people and do a full-immersion mini apprenticeships. They end up doing everything we do and by the time they leave, they are basically doing every job from start to finish, if not actually running the business. In their packet of workshop materials is included all of the recipes they will make while here - pretty much our whole production list. A number of these workshop participants have gone on to start their own, very similar businesses (several of them within our target market area) and they usually use our recipes as their business base. None of them, as good a job as they are doing, do I consider as serious, worrisome competition. I guess the point I'm trying to make is that, at least in my opinion, the recipes themselves are a very small part of the whole business. That doesn't mean that you can't get a pretty penny for them, I'm sure, but even if you do decide to sell them and then get back into the game - chances are that you'll not have lost much (once those pesky non-competition issues are resolved!) Good luck.

As an artisan supplier to a number of very high end restaurants, I am almost always piled with "extras" when ever I am able to visit one for a meal. This can range from a couple of free glass of wine to a comp'ed entire multi-course meal. This can easily amount to hundreds of dollars in value. My tipping policy is very straight forward if not simple. Understand the value of what you have been given, add it to the check amount and tip the server accordingly. THEN Further, understand who it was who actually gave you the freebies (maybe it was the chef sending out extra courses, or the sommelier bringing another bottle of wine, or the owner comping the whole meal) and reward them appropriately. That can be the tricky part. For the sommelier this might mean sending him back his favorite adult beverage or something else easy. For the owner or chef it probably means something much less tangible but infinitely more valuable - future good will and loyalty. The next time I'm running low on product he'll still get his order when somebody else might not. Or when he needs a rush order for a last minute party - he's gonna get it ASAP.

I don't understand. Why would including a service charge in the price of the meal be less than honest? Don't get me wrong, I prefer traditional tipping methods - I'm just curious. One never sees other costs broken out on a guest check (so much for the cooks, so much for overhead, so much for the food cost, dish breakage, utilities, etc). Why should service be different if an all-inclusive bill was to be presented?

Restaurant people are notorious for over-tipping when they go out to eat and I'm no exception. When eating in a quality establishment with decent food service I can't imagine tipping less than 20%. Exceptional service can elicit 30%. In a more pedestrian venue it is usually even more. Just because my lunch special at the little Mexican restaurant in town only costs $5 it doesn't mean that it was any less work to serve than a full-price meal and I'll typically leave at least $2 (40%). Anything less seems insulting. Wine service is also a special case and I'll tip 10%-20% depending on the bottle price (less for high priced wines) and whether the actual sommelier is involved or not etc. Most good waiters, especially at the higher end places where this trend of included-gratuity for everyone seems to be most common, would be furious to "only" get 18% on average. I think it is a bad policy from every point of view EXCEPT perhaps for the poorest-quality wait staffers who don't know how to give proper and reward-able service. For them, I'm sure it is manna from heaven. Like tip-sharing (which I also find very distasteful in most instances) it is a bad step toward socializing a penultimately capitalistic profession.

I've got a sweet #12 Griswold fry pan that I use all the time and if I read the logo right it's a 1868-1913 casting. The oldest food tool I have in the kitchen (but don't use!) is a 900 to 1200 year old (according to local archeology) stone cutting point. It's siting on the window sill now but we found on a walk up on the mesa behind us. The point was apparently made and used by one of the Anasazi tribes that lived and hunted in this area. I've also got an old carbon steel boning knife ca. 1920 I use just about everyday. I guess I'm the next oldest thing and all of the above will long outlive me!

The secret to really great Louisiana-style Red Beans and Rice... 2 words... Pickled Pork (also called "Pickle Meat"). Most good recipes call for some kind of pork from ham hocks (too sweet for my tastes) to tasso or a Cajun sausage like andouille but the pickled pork adds all that necessary porky flavor and also a nice kick of acidity that really makes it all come together just right. Pickled Pork is pretty much just what it sounds like. Take some 80-20 lean/fat pork (shoulders/butts are perfect for this), cut it into roughly 2" cubes and marinate it in a garlicky distilled vinegar/pickling spice brine for a couple of days (think Italian salad dressing without the oil and plus the pickling spices). Add the drained pickle pork (be sure to knock off all the pickling spices) to the red bean/"holy trinity" mire poix (celery, onions and bell pepper) mess when the beans are about 1/2 way cooked along with your seasonings and keep cooking until the beans and meat are both are fall-apart tender. Serve over rice (I personally like white rice but "Dirty Rice" made with chicken livers is good too) with warm crusty French bread, hot sauce and some good beer.

This is indeed a sad and amazingly ignorant developing situation. It is truly hard to believe that they think this will actually accomplish anything good. Government Prohibition against alcohol failed miserably in the USA (but at what cost??) and with any luck this foolishness will be likewise quenched in Italy. Let's hope it doesn't take them 13 years to realize their folly. In the mean time, look for a molecular speak-easy coming to a neighborhood near you!

Here's an entertaining and thought-provoking article from the NY Times by Sally Ryan: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/17/dining/17house.html?pagewanted=all In it she explores and discusses some recent "innovations" in the home kitchen appliance field and how they relate to how much of our society is distancing itself from "real cooking". Personally, I am consistently amazed and dismayed in the grocery store check-out line while observing other shoppers' purchases. Their carts are almost always filled with boxes and cans of frozen or pre-made foods and "complete" meals. Nobody buys INGREDIENTS anymore! --------------------- Here are a couple of eye-opening quotes from the article... "Consider that in the $3.8 billion category called small kitchen electrics, sales were up almost 9 percent from 2008 to 2009, according to market research by the NPD Group. Meanwhile, sales of housewares — that includes knives, pots and pans — were down 11.5 percent." and... Quoting Sharon Franke, the longtime director of kitchen appliances and technology at the Good Housekeeping Institute we learn... "...push-button technology is not pitched exclusively to cooks with limited skills. Smart ovens that can cost thousands of dollars will calculate cooking times based on whether the cook is roasting, say, white meat or dark, using a glass pan or a metal one." and while she has not yet tested a chicken-nugget button "she is a big fan of the “perfect turkey” button on the Electrolux wall ovens, which start around $2,000." ----------------------------------- I particularly enjoyed the insights into the whole product-development process that these home appliances apparently go through. It can, apparently, take years for a kitchen appliance to go from concept to production idea to reality and if they get it wrong and “the warehouse is filled with home yogurt makers." Further, according to the article, frozen-dinner makers will send the prototypes of meals to microwave-oven manufacturers for input on the best type of tray to use and even how to arrange the food in the tray so that it heats properly. Makes sense but who knew? So what's the next BIG THING? •Will it be the new convection oven with a lever on the front that lowers a metal press inside the oven to make panini sandwiches? •How about an appliance where you plug in your ZIP code, and it will adjust cooking times based on your elevation? •Or maybe the system where you can enter a special code from your box of frozen pizza and then software programs the oven to cook the food so that it comes out just as the producer intended (and, of course, reaches temperatures that the government deems high enough to kill pathogens, because we really need to get the government involved here!)? So, what do you think... Are we who make our meals from actual ingredients, on stoves and in ovens, using pots and pans and knives, a dying breed?

I think they'd have better luck with an indoor pool, don't you?

Sorry but I couldn't "stomach" very much of the show and quit at the second break of the first show. 60 Minutes meets Monty Python or maybe PeeWee Herman does reality TV. Fake drama, pseudo science, poorly researched, ladle on the guilt trip with a shovel, let’s poke MORE fun at West Virginia, blather. It will probably be a huge hit if they think to add a laugh track or maybe vote people out of town if they don’t cooperate. That said, the guy’s heart IS probably in the right place but REALLY, is it really possible that in this day and age that anybody who is even slightly interested can’t figure out good food from bad? And as a scarier aside, does it really matter? Satire alert… We’re in an age where the government is making restaurants put calorie counts and all sorts of warnings on their menus; where nearly every grocery product we buy has a nutrition label and many also carry warnings, where some kinds of fats are being outlawed; where salt has been attacked as a deadly killer, HFCS is made public enemy #1 and even spinach KILLS CHILDREN with deadly bacteria! In the US, Big brother is just getting its toes wet in the waters of controlling what we will be allowed to eat. The recent passage of our new mega-health reform act gives the government an even greater opportunity to intervene in all of our consumptive activities “for our own good”. How long will it be until not serving “all the right colors” on the family dinner plate will be a criminal act (or at least probable cause for a child-endangerment investigation)? We’re already charging mothers with abuse or threatening to take their children away from them for feeding their kids the fresh milk from their own healthy dairy animals (because it hadn’t been pasteurized). I say wait a few years and the whole point of the TV show will be moot. We’ll all be eating exactly how the government tells us to… OR ELSE! Back to earth now. Factually, according to recent demographic information, the biggest difference between the CDC’s healthiest and least healthy places boils down to money and education. The healthiest places are much wealthier and better educated on whole than the unhealthy communities. I’m not saying that being poor and uneducated precludes eating well; in fact a good case can be made that it costs less to eat properly but it does, in general, take more work, skill and time to do so. Anyway, I’m not sure that any TV show can begin to overcome those kinds of immense socio-economic obstacles and their accompanying fast food inertial momentum. Then again, what’s to lose by trying?

I just came across this article from the Toronto Star (as if we really need another reason to eat REAL syrup!)... Here's why maple syrup is very good for your health Canada’s sweetest export might come with some added health benefits Published On Mon Mar 22 Nicole Baute Living Reporter Good news for sweet tooths everywhere: that sticky syrup you love to pour on pancakes and waffles is not only bad for you — it might be good for you, too. Sure, it’s sugary and calorie-packed. But real maple syrup is also full of compounds touted for their health benefits, according to a professor from the University of Rhode Island. Navindra Seeram, an assistant professor of pharmacy who specializes in medicinal plant research, found a cocktail of 20 antioxidants in 20 litres of the sweet stuff from Quebec, including 13 never before found in maple syrup. Although he says more research is needed to determine whether people can actually benefit from maple syrup, Seeram adds the compounds are reported to have antibacterial, anti-cancer and anti-diabetic properties. Seeram – awarded a $115,000 research grant by the Federation of Quebec Maple Syrup Producers, and Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada -- has a sugar maple tree trunk in his lab for future research. “A lot of people don’t even think of using maple syrup as a sweetener,” he says. “Apart from putting it on your pancakes and your waffles, think about integrating it in your cuisine, in cooking.” The newly-discovered compounds are types of lignans, also found in flax seed and whole wheat, a stilbene, which is in the same chemical class as the red wine extract resveratrol, and flavonoids, which are known for their anti-inflammatory, anti-cancer and antioxidant properties. Phenolic acids, commonly found in berries and coffee, were also found in the syrup. Seeram thinks sugar maples might secrete phenolics as a defence mechanism when they are wounded by being tapped. He says it makes sense that maple syrup contains antioxidant properties, because it comes from sap located just inside the maple tree’s bark, which basks in the sun. His findings, presented this week at the American Chemical Society’s annual meeting in San Francisco, are great news for the booming maple syrup industry. Geneviève Béland, director of promotion and market development for the Federation of Quebec Maple Syrup Producers, says maple syrup exports have increased by up to 10 per cent a year since 2003, with the exception of last year, when the crop was too small to fulfill worldwide demand. Béland says Seeram’s study builds on previous research that has found maple syrup to contain a host of natural minerals such as calcium, vitamin B, zinc, potassium and magnesium. “I think that we are at the beginning of a new life (for) maple products,” says Béland, who says she’s watched high-end chefs create incredible new flavours by mixing maple syrup, sugar or butter with other ingredients. “We are realistic here,” Béland says. “It’s a sugar, for sure. It’s a little like olive oil. Olive oil is a fat, however, if you need to choose a fat, well, you’re better to choose something like olive oil. So it’s along the same thinking here: if you want to use a sugaring agent, you might prefer to choose maple syrup or a maple product.” Registered dietitian Shannon Crocker says you would probably have to consume large amounts of maple syrup to benefit from its antioxidant properties. If anything, Canadians need to cut back on overall sugar consumption, not ramp it up. “Yes, it may be better than white sugar but, bottom line, you still want to have small amounts of it,” Crocker says. Although it’s much pricier than high-fructose commercial syrups with maple flavouring, Seeram says only real maple syrup is likely to contain these natural properties. It’s worth paying more for the real stuff. But some consumers don’t even know the difference between syrups real and fake: a Federation of Quebec Maple Syrup Producers survey found 50 per cent of Americans did not know whether they were buying real maple syrup or not.

I haven't been involved in syruping in a long (LONG) time but my family used to tap trees in CT and make, maybe, 40-50 gallons of syrup a season for personal consumption, friends & family with a little left as a cash crop. "Worth tapping" depends on what your expectations are. Not all types of maple trees are equal in their sap sweetness. You want to make sure they are "sugar maples" or "red maples" for best results. Not all trees of the same species will have the same sugar content to their sap either. And the variables can change from year-to-year and dramatically with the weather. The nice thing about "huge" trees is that you can put more than one tap in them. Trees over 24" diameter can handle up to 3 taps but you really don't want to tap any more then that, regardless of tree size. Our taps probably averaged around 10 gallons per season (= about a QT of syrup) but I bet some yielded three or four times that. Some we had to go harvest the buckets 3 times a day or they'd overflow on heavy sap days. There's a lot more to doing a good job then just poking a hole in a tree and boiling down the sap to syrup but that should give you an idea whether or not your trees are "worth it" and you can do the research from there. Good luck!

I will never again candy-coat my finger... When I'm cooking sugar and need to check if is "thread", Soft ball", firm Ball", "crack" etc, I always dip my finger in a little ice water then right into the pot of sugar then rub the sugar to see what stage it is at. It's the fastest and most reliable method I know. Once I was flying around the kitchen with about half a dozen things in the works and the sugar was getting very close. I wanted to check it every few seconds but still had to be doing other things. Dip-Check...stir a pot, Dip-Check...check the oven, Dip-Check...deglaze a pan, Dip...OUCH!! I'd dipped my finger well into the molten sugar BEFORE the ice water. Yup, it was a perfect firm-ball and when some skin came off my finger with the hardened sugar I swore I would never again be so careless (and haven't been). I will never again fry in a broiling pan... When I was a kid I'd watch my mom make hamburgers on her electric range. Sometimes she'd pan-fry them on top of the stove and sometimes she'd broil them in the oven. One day I decided to "help" with lunch and started cooking the burgers on the range for her. Unfortunately I'd gotten my signals crossed and had put the burgers on a rack and fit it into the aluminum broiler pan before setting that on the burner. It seemed to be going slowly so I cranked up the burner to high. My mom walked in just as the aluminum pan began melting and dripping down around the burner coils. GAWD what a smell and mess! I will never again leave a tallow sculpture unattended... I was working as the pastry chef at a hotel but it was slow and the catering dept was preparing for a big buffet function so I helped out by taking on one of the centerpiece sculptures for the table. We made our own tallow mixes with beef fat, lard and shortening and for one part of the sculpture I whipped a bunch of it and applied it to a base, knifing it to look like swirls of water. Well the waitrons (ah, I mean valued service staff) were always coming into my pastry room looking to snag a snack. One of their favorite things to do was steal frosting from a bowl or even off a finished cake. So, sure enough, as I was coming back from the walk-in, I was just in time to see one of my favorite waiters take a big finger-full of my sculpture and pop it into his mouth. It was precious! On second thought... maybe I WILL leave my tallow unattended more often! I will never again bake sweet potatoes without piercing them...

Goat butter is always almost pure white unless coloring (usually annatto) is added, just like cheeses made from goats milk. This us because the yellow coloring naturally found to some degree or another in cow's milk comes from carotene. Goat are very efficient utilizers of the carotene in their bodies and almost none passes through to the milk. It is sometimes hard for the uninitiated to get used to white butter. As for the flavor not being "goaty", most producers (and many consumers) would see that as a good thing. The goaty flavor/aroma comes from the capric acid naturally occurring in goat milk. Goat milk is very fragile and if it is at all abused (less then clean milking environment, not cooled properly, agitated too much, not used in a timely manner, etc, etc, etc.) the capric acid will "kick-out" much more, giving the end product a stronger flavor. Strong flavor can also come from improper feed or contamination by the musk oils from the males (bucks). Additionally, there are breeds of goats (Toggenburgs most notably) and family lines with in breeds that tend to have stronger flavored milk. It is much harder to make good, fresh, clean-tasting goats milk dairy products than it is to make "goaty" ones.

For the flavor components of wine (probably the most complex part of recording your wine impressions), one of the most effective ways to communicate the qualities is to compare the aromas you perceive to something else - hopefully something fairly common and well known. "Strong black cheery notes" is more helpful than "Tastes like a cross between fresh Consort currants and Bonrata grapes". While I was in culinary school I had the opportunity to play with an "Essence Box" It was a kit that had dozens of aromas in little bottles that we could open, whiff and use to compare to various wines. It had things like lavender, sage, mushrooms, leather as well as "bad" smells like rotten eggs, cork etc. It was a real eye-opener. I did a quick search and found this company that has several different kits available: http://www.winearomas.com/. They have a 54 pc.set that looks really sweet. Good luck!

I've wondered that myself. I suspect that while a heavier feed regime would certainly have helped the meat cuts (a lot), I'm not sure that the fat coverings and bacon would have ever achieved (overachieved??) that degree of development. It was quite spectacular to see when raw but it melted down to near-normal sized pieces when fried-up making the yield ratio pretty pathetic. Lots of great bacon grease to use later though!

I'm no expert but I will share my experience. We've been raising a few hogs every year, primarily on the whey from our small goat dairy, for 7 or 8 years. We grow them out for about 9 months (more than is commercially common) to coincide with our seasonal cheese-making. For the first hogs we got, I followed some online guidance for feeding which stopped at 6 months so I just kept increasing the feed proportionally as they got bigger. When we picked up the halves from slaughter, our butcher made some comment about them being over-fatted. He wasn't kidding. We got almost 100 lbs of rendered lard off one of them! The meat was excellent but, apparently, all the extra feed went mostly into external the fat layers. The bacon slices were 3" wide! The next year, after some more research, I adjusted my feeding schedule and only marginally increased their feed over the last 3 months. These hogs came out WAY too lean. "What the heck??!!" I mean so lean that the bacon was more like ham without enough fat to even think about crisping up when cooked. The meat was OK in flavor but moist cooking was needed for most cuts and there was barely enough fat on the chops to render in the pan for searing. I was confused and po'd. Back to the research department. I was pretty comfortable with the feeding regime now so it must be something else. I'd gotten the second year's piglets from a different source so I got in touch with both suppliers and got information on the breeds (sorry I can't find my notes on the specifics right now). It turns out the the first hogs I got were from what is considered a lard-type breed and the second ones from a lean-type breed. Knowing that I wanted the lard-type I was more careful with the following year's purchase and the hogs came out perfect (he humbly declared)! I have since settled on getting a particular cross (Hampshire-Duroc), from the same breeder every year and have been thrilled with the results. I don't know about climate-related feed changes but it stands to reason that a slight increase might be necessary in very cold weather as the hogs will be using more energy to stay warm (ie converting less to meat). In hot weather it is vital to give them plenty of fresh water to drink and a nice deep mud wallow (pigs don't sweat and need to cool off externally). As for feeding for the cut of meat, I've found that (within the context of fat-type vs lean-type) what makes one cut excellent translates pretty directly into excellent cuts all around. When the bacon is perfect, the hams are nicely fatted, the shoulders (picnics) have about the perfect lean-fat ratio for charcuterie or BBQ, the chops have a lovely fat coat and you'll still get plenty of leaf fat for rendering etc. I think this is even more true with heritage/ all-purpose breeds. Here's a good place to start. It's also British from the SmallHolder website http://www.accidentalsmallholder.net/articles/pigs/

We raise around 4 hogs a year from weaner piglettes for friends, local restaurants and ourselves. We're a cheese dairy and the hogs are primarily raised on the whey from cheese making (whey can replace up to 30% of their normal diet on a dry matter value basis if anyone is taking notes). Additionally they get lots of garden trimmings and some table scraps with the balance made up with a grain - usually cracked corn. Pigs are natural omnivores. They'll eat just about anything you offer them, falls into their area or is small enough and too slow to out run them. I've seen them chase down and devour in one bite baby chicks and peafowl who have strayed into their area or root up a mouse nest just to slurp up the pile of hairless "pinkies". And these are not hungry pigs either. They seem to do it as much for the sport as anything. That said, "you are what you eat" dictates that your going to want to be at least a little careful with the diet. Hogs go from almost a 1:1 feed conversion ratio (they turn every pound of feed they eat into nearly a pound of pig)as new borns to about a 4:1 ratio by the time they are 6 months old. That means that nearly 25% of everything you feed them as young adults is retained. This seems like an excellent opportunity to influence the flavor of the meat with diet (what if they ate a pound of sage a day, what would that do to the meat flavor??) but in reality we've found vary little direct relation between special diet and special flavor. I think it vital the the hogs get fed a good, balanced diet for over-all health. They need to be able to act like hogs (playing, rooting around etc) for happiness. They need to be treated humanely at all times, right up to the moment the are dispatched. I think these are the most important things that go into making a tasty hog. There are also big differences between types/breeds of hogs (lean-type vs lard-type) and their corresponding dietary needs but that's more than I'm going to get into right now. Good luck!

You've hit upon one of the important basic differences between "stocks" and "broths". Without the additional components left by the cooked-down bones you don't have the backbone or structure necessary to get the thickening you're looking for. One possible solution might be to add a few pieces of a good glace de viande. The glace will bring with it a lot of gelatin for thickening and your boef will additionally benefit from a rich flavor boost. I'm guessing that since you were looking for more of a jus lie-type thickness it shouldn't take too much glace ratio to achieve it. Alternatively, I like arrowroot for a light-touch thickener, if you decide to use one. (never have used xantham gum etc.for thickening sauces)

One of the problems is that "gourmet" has been used so indiscriminately and used so broadly as to have lost all significance. It has come to (supposedly) mean a connoisseur of anything from food, wine and liqueurs to cigars, footware and cat & dog food. If we're talking only about human food and drink we need a term more culinary-specific. I don't find "gastronome" too objectionable. It doesn't seem to have the elitist ring that "gourmet" used to, nor the over-used worthlessness that word has today. I like the thoughtfulness about ones cooking/eating that is implied with the word gastronome. Of course the root of the word is French and it seems like there is some resistance to that on general principles. It also might bring with it some etymological baggage like associations with "gastric juices" or "gastropods" (snails). On the other hand, snails are delicious so maybe there's a double entendre working for us there. Then again, we're possibly back to the French connection with the whole escargot thing. How about "epicure" or "epicurean"? The base, I believe, is Latin (not French) and it certainly speaks to discriminating tastes in food and beverage. Might be too elitist-sounding, although I think it is important to be able to make the distinction between people who have an interest in eating well and those who just eat. Is that elitist? I suppose so if we are saying that it is better to eat well then just eat. OK I'm an elitist, I guess. There are also some hedonistic roots and implications to the whole "epicure"-family of terms that may be objectionable. "Culinarian"? Too cooking-oriented and not enough consumption-oriented I think. Culinologist? Epicureaist? (kind of like like "mixologist"?) Not sure making up a word is the way to go. Too technical-sounding anyway. Alright, back to the drawing board.

I dunno. The "eGulleteers"?? OK. Maybe not.

I'll second (third?) the Tomato Growers Supply suggestion. I have always been happy with their seeds. For seeds other than tomatoes and some peppers/chiles I use Fedco Seeds and their sister companies Moose Tubers and Organic Growers Supply a lot. They are based in Maine and while they do specialize in seeds that do well in the northeast, not exclusively so. They are a co-op and their prices are very good. They are also very heavily into organic, GMO-free, fair-trade and politically correct products if that is a factor in your ordering.

My sister, who lives in Philly highly recommends: The Devil's Den (south Philly) http://www.devilsdenphilly.com/index.html for their excellent food and great happy hour. They also have an "In the Biz" special offering 20% discount to Food Service Industry Employees from 10PM - 2 AM

Geez budrichard I'm sorry if I rubbed you the wrong way. I just wanted to point out to ianeccleston that there were other options than the classic mass-produced, factory farm product the you discussed in your original post. I mean, he's going to all this extra work to avoid just buying his pork in a grocery store or at a butcher shop so I think it is fair to assume that he's looking for a better-than-average quality end product. I think that small-holder (mom & pop) raised hogs , organic-raised hogs, Certified Humanely Raised and Handled hogs, and/or heritage breed hogs might all fit that bill. BTW, I would dispute your assertion that these types of operations are "insignificant" or "mythical". You're right in that not being in the Chicago area, I can't directly help Ian (posters like ronnie_suburban did that very nicely) but I guess I was actually responding more to your post on a general-interest basis. With almost 600 views of this topic to-date I'd be surprised if all those folks were exclusively looking for Chicago info - it's as likely that "hog straight from the farm" (the topic title) info is the main area of interest. Please accept my apology if you took my original post personally. I am (quite seriously) in awe of the efficiencies of our country's industrialized food-producing systems that let us bring to market the greatest quantities of meat and produce at the lowest prices (notice I didn't say "cost") in the world. I'm just saying there are viable other options that should be considered and discussed.

Another consideration is your labor. We hand-roll all our truffle bases and hand-dip them individually and it takes twice as long to roll, dip and garnish the base into finished truffles if they are half the size (duh). Labor is probably you highest variable cost with your ingredient costs (food cost) probably in the 15-25% range. You have to ask yourself if you can change enough for the additional labor to produce twice the number of finished truffles per pound. For example (simplified for clarity)... Say you sell 1 oz truffles for $1 each, your food cost is 25 cents your labor cost is 50 cents and your gross profit 25 cents (yes, I know I'm ignoring overhead, packaging etc. but bare with me). A pound of finished truffles costs you $4 in ingredients, $8 in labor. That means you're making a $4 (25%) profit on a pound of these candies selling at $16/lb. Now you decide to make your truffles 1/2 oz. Your food cost stays the same (half as much ingredients for half as much product) but your labor doubles (same amount of time, half as much product) and as a smart business person, you're not going to double your labor cost and willingly reduce your profit margin. SO, with your food cost still at $4 per pound, your labor now at $16/lb to maintain your 25% profit the new cost would be calculated at $6.66 for a new selling price of $26.66 per pound. That’s a 66% increase in price per pound. Can your market support this new price level? The obvious corollary to this is that as you INCREASE the truffles size, your price per pound can come down (or your profit margin can increase). Alternatively, if you price by the “each” not the pound you will have a great deal more flexibility to adapt for fluctuating ingredient and labor prices without having to change your prices all the time. Just adjust the size of your truffles a little. One more thought on pricing… All of your bases will not cost out the same. Some will be a lot more costly than others. To avoid having too many tiers of pricing which is confusing to customers and a pain for you to deal with you should either: 1. Price for your most expensive base or 2. Base your sales price on your average (not mean) base cost. This will require some pretty accurate sales forecasting but is well worth the time if you are in a situation where competitive pricing is important.