My Signature Scrapple

 What I called my "signature scrapple recipe" was posted on my Writing Life II blog on October 25, 2012, the day before my birthday. This is not a recipe for authentic scrapple but for "a poor man's clone" that I developed from a love of scrapple and frustration at its rare availability on the west coast. Moreover, this recipe is neither difficult nor time consuming. Making authentic scrapple is both, as I learned in graduate school.

I had a friend who lived in the country outside of Eugene and raised chickens and a few pigs. He had taken to heart my frequent laments that the west coast had yet to embrace scrapple as a staple, or even as a luxury item for that matter. Before Oregon, I had lived in New Jersey, Virginia and Texas, where stores often carried several brands of scrapple, it was so commonplace. In the west, at best, you might find it frozen or fresh in the deli of an enlightened cook.

One day, I told my friend, I must learn to make my own scrapple. Sooner than I thought, it turns out. One day I returned home from clsss to find a cardboard box on the porch. In the box was ... a pig's head! My friend had slaughtered one of his and remembered my intentions.

It was time to make my own scrapple. I brought out a recipe I'd been saving and faced an immediate challenge. I didn't have a pot big enough for the pig's head. 

To make a long story short, I broke up the head to fit into the pots I had. Eventually all four burners on the electric stove were simmering parts of the head. For hours. And hours. The "aroma" drove my live-in girlfriend to spend the night with a sister.

The scrapple turned out good, not great, and I froze much of it, enjoying scrapple for many months. Then it was back to hit and miss.

Two decades later I stumbled upon a recipe for "easy scrapple". on the early World Wide Web. The recipe was based on ground pork and cornmeal and wasn't half bad. This is the recipe I tinkered with to come up with my own.

And here it is!

https://snd cdeemer2007.blogspot.com/2012/10/my-signature-scrapple-recipe.html

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