"pickled pigs feet" news and stories

The vast majority of people out there have a food comfort zone from which they rarely stray. That was certainly the case for Chris Fehnel, a regular guy from the Scranton, PA area. That is, until one day, when he was watching Andrew Zimmern eat scorpions on the Travel Channel.

I decided then and there that I was going to try scorpion one day before I die.Then I thought, why not try it sooner rather than later? Why not make it happen. Why not try all the weird food you want to? Not too long after that, this idea was born.

For Chris, the idea was to make his own web-based show called Eat Weird, documenting his exploration of new, interesting and on occasion, admittedly weird foods. So far, he's released three episodes. Episode one, embedded above, shows him eating headcheese for the first time (he gets a little hung up by the texture). In episode two, he tries pickled pigs feet and in the third episode, a local chef makes up a dish of wild goose salad for him to taste and attempt to identify.

It's a fun watch, because while I consider myself something of an exploratory eater (thanks to a friend, I recently tried both duck tongue and fish maw, which were new ones to me) I've never tried either headcheese or pickled pigs feet. Chris reacts well and expressively to the new things he's trying, keeping the show fresh and entertaining.

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I was just talking about pickles and declining sales earlier. Now I read an article about two guys who quit their jobs as investment adviser and financial analyst to take over the family pickle business. And it's not just any old pickles, but it's pigs feet, eggs, and sausage that are being pickled. Now I know that pickled pigs feet and sausages are a regional Southern thing. I lived in Georgia for a few years, as well as two in Florida, and saw them in stores, stacked high in enormous jars holding a gallon of these things. I just never got up the courage to try them back then. I hadn't yet caught on to the wonder of braised Chinese pigs feet as the delicacy that it is. If I had some of those pickled trotters in front of me I would definitely try them. The idea of pickled sausages is even starting to sound interesting. Or maybe it's just that I'm hungry and thinking about any type of food right now feels like a good thing. Well, except pickled eggs.

These guys think that they can boost sales with their sausages and hold steady on their feet. Their first idea is to pack the sausage and feet in single serve packs. This way customers can try them out and not have to buy those huge jars full of feet to lug home. They say that while the sale of the feet tends to remain stable, those of the pickled eggs and sausage are a high growth area. Especially if more hurricanes come along.. They had a huge boost in sales in the last hurricane season since their products are so well pickled they last forever without spoiling. Not only that but when they hired a lab to test their products they found out that when Listeria bacteria was injected into the pickled sausage it not only didn't reproduce, it actually died. I feel that remains to be seen whether their sales are going to increase, especially since since it seems the brothers haven't yet gotten around to eating all of their own products and have been shying away from tasting their trotters for years.

If you get the gumption to try some of their products , or already have, let me know what they're like.

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