Growing up in Lehigh Valley area of Pennsylvania exposed me to cool things that other parts of the country have never heard of, like quoits and Yuengling Lager. Quoits is a lawn game. It isn’t horseshoes. Don’t say that it is or you’ll likely get a 1 lbs rubber washer hurled at you. There are variations, but ours goes like this:
This is a popular outdoor variation played principally in and around Pennsylvania, USA. This game uses two one-pound rubber quoits per player, which are pitched at a short metal pin mounted on a heavy 24x24x1 inch slab of slate.
Players take turns throwing a quoit at the pin. The quoit nearest the pin gets one point. If one player has two quoits nearer the pin than either of his opponent’s quoits, he gets two points. A quoit that encircles the pin (called a ringer) gets three points. If all four quoits are ringers, the player who threw the last ringer wins the game; otherwise, the first player to make 21 points wins the game.
From Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quoits#Slate-board_quoits
Here’s an action shot taken by Bruce Winter: (I swear it’s coincidence I’m wearing a SPEED shirt)
Okay, enough about all that. Here’s what I really wanted to talk about – Scrapple. It’s a food and you might guess what some of its ingredients are. Yup, scraps. The scrapple I’m cooking in the pictures below is from Schreiner’s Sausage here in Phoenix and it’s pretty good stuff. The best scrapple I’ve had, by far, is from R&R Provisions. The difference? Buckwheat vs cornmeal. Buckwheat wins every time.
Scrapple is typically sliced from a loaf and fried until it’s brown on the edges. You’ll see that in my kitchen slices weren’t exactly achieved and the reason for this is that it was frozen before I made it. Once thawed, scrapple has a tendency to fall apart when being sliced. It still browned up nicely so all was not lost. Here it is being fried with 3 eggs in bacon grease. The bacon was also from Schreiner’s and was the best I’ve had since being in the Lehigh Valley. The first sign of great bacon is that it’s being sliced to your liking right in front of you.
The ingredients of Schreiner’s scrapple are as follows: pork snouts, pork tongue, corn meal, bacon ends, ham ends, water, onions, salt, spices, sugar, sodium nitrite. I have no idea what the calorie or macronutrient content of this meal is, nor do I care. Here it is on the plate with bacon and eggs:
I’m no food artist, that’s for sure. In fact my pictures probably make all this look completely unappetizing. Good, more for me.