Everything But the Oink

     After posting yesterday about the Pennsylvania Germans and their creation of funeral pie I got to thinking about some of the other tasteful contributions they have made to our kitchen table.  The list is considerable and I will spend the next few days highlighting some of my favorites.  Now having said that I will spare you the details of what goes into head cheese, sometimes referred to as souse.  But let's just say that the German immigrants were very frugal in their style of living and that carried over into their food production as well.
     Having a Pennsylvania Dutch mother at work daily in the kitchen as I grew up meant that I became familiar with that style of cooking from a very young age.  So it was not uncommon to see on my breakfast plate a golden brown slice of fried scrapple beside some shimmery scrambled eggs.  Yes scrapple is another regional food that was brought to the New World by people looking for religious tolerance and a better way of life.  But what exactly is it?  Some of the unappreciative in the culinary arts refer to it as pork mush, but that is a pejorative term for a protein rich food that is typically eaten as the first meal of the day, particularly in the cooler months.
     It is as it's name implies the scraps of meat from the hog that are left after the prime cuts like the hams, ribs, loin and belly are removed.  So all the left overs are then ground together and added to corn meal and spices and molded into a brick like shape to later be sliced and fried so that there is a firm crust on the outside and a creamy warm center.  It is often  topped with one of a variety of condiments such as ketchup or apple butter, another wonderful contribution from our German ancestors.  And as you might expect there are about as many recipes for the making of scrapple as there are German last names in the Schwenkfelder Church Genealogical Record.  Each one with a different and exact quantity of certain spices added  into the mixture.  It is also sold commercially by local producers such as Hatfield Quality Meats and Habbersetts and Leidy's.  But my favorite is the home made stuff that I purchase on my Friday forays to The Green Dragon in Ephrata.
     Sadly, I'm the only one in my household who enjoys this regional delight.  For some reason I cannot get either of my daughters or my wife to share my enthusiasm for a fortifying morning meal of a slice or two of scrapple.  But then again I can't stand even the smell of soft boiled eggs.