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Llano Seco Rancho, one of our Northern California clients, is hosting a week long campaign to encourage consumers to celebrate every part of the animal. Check out the press release below to learn more about the event!

September 17, 2013

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

In partnership with The Butcher’s Guild and the Eat Real Festival, Llano Seco Organic Meats will present the inaugural event Offal Wonderful, September 23-29th, 2013. Offal Wonderful is a week-long promotionalcampaign to celebrate the innards of every animal. The climax of the week will be a series of offal-focused activities at the 5th annual Eat Real Festival in Jack London Square, Oakland, September 27-29th. The Butcher’s Guild Conference, an educational, inspirational gathering of the country’s premier butchers, which directly follows the Eat Real Festival, will also feature offal in its programming.

Llano Seco Rancho is a 6th-generation family farm with a rich history of balancing agriculture, livestock husbandry and conservation. It is 18,000 acres of mixed-use conventional and organic farming on the banks of the Sacramento River, and one of the last intact Mexican land grant properties in the state. Llano Seco Organic Meats is a line of organic products from animals raised “from farrow to fork”, and sells primal and subprimal cuts of pork and beef to high-end restaurants, retail grocery stores and Farmers Markets throughout California. Llano Seco also sells value added products such as “Argentine style” and Italian sausage, uncured hot dogs, smoked hams and bacon, and breakfast sausage.

Offal Wonderful will introduce eaters to the delicious variety of the oft ignored, off-cuts and offal, traditionally defined as the organ meat of the animals. For the week of Sept 23-29, Bay Area restaurants, butcher shops, and caterers, will feature offal on their menu and host their own offal-centric events. For the purpose of the campaign, “offal” will include the organs as well as all the odds and ends of the animal: head, shank, trotter, ears, snouts, tails, blood, heart, liver, kidneys, back fat, leaf lard, and skin. Llano Seco ranchers will also be available to conduct educational sessions with restaurant staff to expand knowledge about sustainable animal husbandry methods, and offal and whole-animal utilization. Current participating restaurants include: Liza
Shaw, Merigan Sub Shop (SF) Peter Swanson, Benchmark Pizzeria (Kensington) Aaron & Monica Rocchino, The Local Butcher Shop (Berkeley) Tia Harrison, Sociale (SF) SunHui Chang, FuseBOX (Oakland) Derek Mccarthy, Pig & Pie (SF) Kyle Itani, Hopscotch (Oakland) Dan Jablow, Jablow's Meats (SF).

In its fifth year of lively attendance, the Eat Real Festival celebrates handmade food with a focus on street food, local wines, handcrafted beers, and traditional food craft – all featuring sustainable, local ingredients with no dish costing more than $5. Over 150,000 people are expected to attend this year’s event. The Butcher’s Guild is a fraternity of meat professionals bound to create a support system for the industry. The Butcher’s Guild focuses on education and camaraderie to achieve a communal goal: a network of successful, skilled, independent butchers across the country.

EVENTS

Offal All Over in Bay Area restaurants

Participating restaurants will feature locally sourced offal dishes throughout Offal Wonderful Week, Monday
Sept 23 – Sunday Sept 29th.

Oakland Chefs Stage

The Oakland Chef Spotlight at the Eat Real Festival, where Oakland Chefs will demonstrate how to prepare creative and flavorful dishes from a pre-selected basket of ingredients featuring Llano Seco offal.
Participating chefs: Charlie Hollowell, Pizzaiolo; Tanya Holland, Brown Sugar Kitchen and BSide BBQ; Kyle Itani, Hopscotch; Minh Tsai, Hodo Soy; Sunhui Chang, FUSEBox; Preeti Mistry, Juhu Beach Club.

Delicious America Offal tasting.

As part of Eat Real’s workshop series “Delicious America,” a series of 6 curated tastings of delicious craft food offerings available around the United States. Each tasting will include 5 samples and a beer, wine, hard cideror non-alcoholic drink. Tickets for each tasting are $15.00 and will be sold in advance.

Tastings: Country Ham, Chicharrones, Pepperoni Meat Stick, Beef Jerky, Goat Cheese, Kraut and Kimchi.

DIY Offal Workshop

Traditional food craft goes new school in do-it-yourself workshops on Butchery, DIY chiccharones, sausage,homemade bitters, jam, fresh cheese and more.

Butcher’s Guild Whole Hog Butchery Demo
Enthusiastically watched by hundreds of Eat Real guests, 3 teams are given the opportunity to turn a whole hoginto porcine plentitude while we observe their skills of cutting, curing and creating. Offal will be included as part of the demo, and chefs will be required to utilize off-cuts, and will be judged on their prowess.

Butcher’s Guild Booth at Eat Real

Eaters can meet producers and butchers, sample local meat products, learn more about the Guild, and purchase Offal Wonderful merchandise throughout the weekend.

Butcher’s Guild Retreat: September 30th-October 2nd, California Culinary Academy, San Francisco
Two days of education in the art and science of the meat business, including branding, bookkeeping and of course, butchery. Attendees are members of The Butcher’s Guild. This year, master butcher instructor is Dario Cecchini, the world’s most famous butcher, visiting from Tuscany to impart his knowledge with America’s finest. Merchandising and processing with offal will be part of the curriculum.