Caught Between a High-End Hobby and Low-Pay VocationCaught between a high-end hobby and low-pay vocation

If small is beautiful, I'm drop-dead gorgeous. Or at least my company is.

My tiny Ellelle Kitchen turns out hundreds of jars of small batch preserves every year, in flavors like golden raspberry-peach, blackberry-Meyer lemon and fig-vanilla bean. I work with great ingredients--fruits and herbs straight from the backyard or from gifted growers selling at local farmers markets that provide a year-round bounty in Southern California. My jars are on the shelves of Los Angeles shops and cafes that draw some of the food-savviest customers around.

But is this one-woman, shoestring operation any way to run a business? You decide.