Food

"Food" is distinct from "crops" (grown in a field, that you can only sell at market by the tonne),

Food is divided into three "tiers" or levels of processing.
 * 1) raw food
 * 2) canned food
 * 3) fully cooked meals

You have to eat in order to stay strong and able to work at maximum capacity.

Selling Your Food
You sell your food to vendors, like John the general store owner, just northeast of your farm. This is a significant source of short-term income (as opposed to farming field crops, which is more of a year-long endeavor). Unlike other games, selling off your food supplies is not only prudent, it's kind of your JOB, Mr. Farmer! Keep back a few prepared foods for yourself, of course.

When selling your food, you should cook it to the maximum tier you can, as the more prep you put into the food, the more you will get. Be sure to obtain all the recipe books (More info under cooking below.) and set up you're farming habits around them for maximum returns.

September is verry important for the selling of food, as it is where you can really rake in the cash thanks to the summer festival in the Town of Redberry. As all food is bought by Rose at a much better price then you get from other venders, It is a good idea to hoard food to sell to Rose at the summer festival. So, if you're not struggling for cash, or if you're getting close to September, it's time to stock pile. (Remember to have a cat if you are hording in your pantry!)

Now you're playing the food market like a true capitalist champ.

Where to obtain raw food.
- Foraging (Wild Mushrooms & strawberries are found in grassy areas just about anywhere. Wild animals (Such as dear and bores) can be seen hanging around places where there are mushrooms / strawberries to forage. Use your Engineer's Sight to highlight all of these.)

- Orchards (You can pick apples from the orchard in the NW corner of your farm, and also on other people's farms. The folk here don't seem to mind if you clean them out dry, so go nuts.)

- Fishing (Raw fish; two varieties. The fishing pole can be bought from John.  The pond next to your farm is a fine place to fish, though there's lots of other bodies of water around.  It doesn't seem to make any difference where you fish though; which type of fish you get is random.  See the Farm Buildings page for "how to fish".)

-Build bee hives (honey. Use your Engineer's Sight to find 4 locations around the perimeter of your farm to build 11 hives.  They produce honey only rarely, so it's best to build all 11 and check them daily.)

- Greenhouse (Vegetables and some fruits. We may just lump them together as "vegetables" for the sake of convenience.  See the Farm Buildings page for more details.)

- Animals (Milk, chicken eggs. See Animals page)

- Trading with NPCs (generally a last resort if you have no food and are starving. You're a farmer; you're supposed to sell food TO them!) (However, you can buy raw food from NPCs, cook it and sell it back to them for a very small profit. Only recomended for early game.)

Cooking
Raw food (Tier 1) is neither very filling or very valuable if sold, and it is not recommended for you to do either with it. Using the stove in your kitchen, you can process raw food into simple canned food (Tier 2) which is worth something both to NPCs, and to your stomach! Full meals (Tier 3) are the most filling and valuable to sell, but require three different (raw) ingredients for each meal, so you're not likely to be able to make many of these until you've harvested (or bought from an NPC) some greenhouse vegetables.

If you get married, your Wife will produce a few meals once a day, (using raw food you have stored in the Pantry downstairs... don't forget to buy a cat!) She's also a better cook than you are, and her meals will restore +100 of your food conditions, which should certainly be enough to keep your own status up, but to make enough food to sell, you will need to make it yourself, just like when you were a bachelor!

Cooking food into full meals (Tier 3) requires you find recipe books to teach yourself how.

There are three:
 * Egg-based Recipes: This book is easiest to find; John at the store next to your farm sells it.  Eggs are also the only of these 3 foods that can be easily produced in large quantities, so you'll be making a lot of these, I think.
 * Honey-based Recipes: Several different NPCs (all women, I think?) have an option to Trade in their dialogue, and can sell you this book.  Time to run around town, chatting up the ladies!  I think I usually find someone hanging out in a church yard selling it. (These ladies can also sell you a few greenhouse veggies immediately).
 * Fish-based Recipes: This book is the least convenient to get, as it is available only from the harvest vendor Rose, only during the month of September. However, it contains magic plates that can be used to become fricking Jesus (More info on this bug below).

As stated above in Selling Your Food, Rose buys all tiers of food products at higher prices than any other NPC, so it's worthwhile to hold some back to sell to her at the end of the year if you can. There's a large balloon that reads "HARVEST", visible from considerable distances, hovering above Rose in September to help you notice her.

Holy Mackerel, Fish Cooking bug.
Somehow, the recipes from some old forgotten testament found its way into the fish-based recipes book, because it lets you perform big J's second favourite party trick, Splitting fish into two. (His favoured being the turning of H2O into a fine Cabernet sauvignon (Red wine you uncultured swine) of course).

When you fish, there are two types you get, the light gray and the dark gray fish with red fins. By most part, you will get the bigger light gray fish, and the occasional red fin. The game seems to check your inventory for both fish to work out the total amount of dish's you can make, However, it makes the fatal flaw of only consuming the stack of red fins when making that batch. This means that as long as you have a few red fins around, you can dupe an arbitrary number of fish into existence.