tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-141925195674785329.post1036640386621155439..comments2024-01-22T08:18:50.069-08:00Comments on Near to Nothing: Honey Mustard Pork ChopsSumikohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09592651891242831465noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-141925195674785329.post-6936788229516006212012-03-23T10:32:57.920-07:002012-03-23T10:32:57.920-07:00Oh, one more thing (sorry my comments are longer t...Oh, one more thing (sorry my comments are longer than your blog post... yikes!). We ended up not having your honey mustard pork chops last night but instead I used another of your recipes. <br /><br />Anyway, I needed to use up these pork steaks from the wild pig our friend hunted. For wild pork, it is pretty good meat, but it does have a "wild" gamey taste and tends to be a little tougher than the domestically raised variety. So... I used your Auntie Pearl Sweet and Sour Chicken recipe for the pork. It was AMAZING! It tasted just like the S&S pork from our favorite restaurant, but much more flavorful. <br /><br />So anyway, if you find a good deal on cheap pork and need an idea (or if you and Robbie go wild boar hunting LOL), keep in mind that your recipe is great with chicken AND pork!<br /><br />I still plan on using your HM pork chop recipe, but I think I will use it with our home grown pork instead of the wild stuff.StaceyNnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-141925195674785329.post-81118227806013018402012-03-23T10:25:57.305-07:002012-03-23T10:25:57.305-07:00The cost of home-grown pork varies depending upon ...The cost of home-grown pork varies depending upon what the piglets cost and how much we can buy pig-food for at the time. Feeding a hog on commercial hog grower at 30 cents per pound does not pan out financially. In order to compete with the artificially cheap, tax-subsidized grocery store meat, we homesteaders have to be a little creative with pig food. However, the store-bought pork cannot compete with the quality of homegrown, no matter how cheap our taxes dollars make it appear!<br /><br />One hog will produce about 100 lbs. of meat. If the piglets are free, as they have been for us and will likely continue to be, then that cuts the initial cost significantly (our son has a sow and will be providing our family with a piglet from each litter and selling the rest). If we fatten them in the fall, we can get about 1000 lbs. of organic pumpkins for $10 from a local organic farm after Halloween (they usually just plow the excess back into the soil and are happy to sell it cheaply for animal food). So the cost to raise one pig on 2000 pounds of pumpkin is about $20. We butcher our hogs ourselves, which saves additional money, so that makes pumpkin-fed pork cost about 20 cents per pound.<br /><br />If we have to use more expensive food, such as local bulk wheat (purchased in truckloads by the ton), we are looking at more like $1.20 per pound (they need fewer pounds of wheat than pumpkin since it is more concentrated). But we can reduce the needed amount of wheat by giving them garden scraps or windfall apples and letting them forage some. Luckily, pigs really can eat almost anything except a steady diet of meat (unless you want the kind of germy pork that shows up in the grocery store LOL!). <br /><br />OK, that’s your farm economics for the day!!StaceyNnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-141925195674785329.post-56881854435664891972012-03-22T13:23:01.503-07:002012-03-22T13:23:01.503-07:00Hi, Stacey! I hope your family enjoys them! What...Hi, Stacey! I hope your family enjoys them! What a blessing to be able to raise your own pigs! I don't think our neighbors would appreciate it if we tried. =-) Have you ever done the math to figure out about how much it costs you per pound to raise a hog? Just curious.Sumikohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09592651891242831465noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-141925195674785329.post-22363892874868762012-03-22T09:05:08.526-07:002012-03-22T09:05:08.526-07:00That recipe looks great and comes at a good time; ...That recipe looks great and comes at a good time; first of all because I had NO idea what was for dinner at our house tonight (until I read your blog, of course), and secondly because we have a bunch of pork chops to use up from our last hog and Gregg and the boys just butchered ANOTHER hog a couple of weeks ago, PLUS a friend who just moved to Idaho gave us a bunch of pork from a wild pig her husband killed… so we need to eat some serious amounts of pork lest my freezer should overflow onto the floor. I really do hope the saying “you are what you eat” is just a saying. <br /><br />Thanks for the recipe. So glad we're not Kosher!!!StaceyNnoreply@blogger.com