Saturday was a typical rainy late March day in Washington, DC. We tried to go to Love Cafe for cupcakes and coffee, because that seemed like a good thing to do early on a Saturday afternoon. It was really hot and crowded there so we left and did the next most logical thing, we went to Cafe Saint-Ex for burgers and Belgian beer.

Eric ordered the scrapple sandwich. I find scrapple mildly horrifying in a Sweeney Todd sorta way, but he loves it.

The waitress sternly quizzed him, “Do you know what Scrapple is?”

He replied that he did. She softened her tone a bit and explained that lots of vegetarians order it because they don’t know what it is but they like the sound of the word.

There are a number of companies who make Scrapple. Hatfield’s (beef and pork), Rapa Scrapple (my favorite because their ingredients list actually includes the words “pork snouts”), and Habbersett Scrapple (had a parenthetical aside for this one but I forgot what it was).

There are more than a few places that make a vegetarian scrapple, which they call, confusingly enough, “scrapple.” I’m willing to give vegetarians a sliver of the benefit of the doubt, on the one hand. At the same time, if you aren’t sure whether something is beef, pork or vege and it’s not clear on the menu, the burden is on you to ask. I believe, after spending a positively silly amount of time reading up on the subject, that the default assumption should be pork unless you see a qualifier explicitly listed on the label.

But back to Saturday…

Later in our adventures, we stopped at Solly’s for a beer. As always happens (to us) in bars, the conversation turned to meat and meat by-products. In this case, the subject was head cheese.

We realized we didn’t know very much about head cheese. Now that I’ve spent a bit of time reading about head cheese, I think I’m going to have to save that for another post.

Deborah Dowd posted a recipe for scrapple on her blog, Play With Food, that doesn’t involve offal, so if you’d like to make your own scrapple but are a bit squeamish about innards that might be a good place to start. She notes,

The traditional way to eat scrapple is with apple butter, but some (blasphemers) eat it with ketchup. Scrapple is a great alternative to other breakfast meats, the perfect counterpoint to a sunny-side egg.

If you’re itching to try your hand at cooking hearts and livers, I reckon this recipe on the Food Network site would be as good a place as any to start.

Unbeknownst to us, Saturday, at the very time we were pondering Scrapple, a Scrapple-fest was taking place in the land Eric spent his formative years - Philadelphia.

Have we tapped into the meat-zeitgeist? The collective unconscious of the flesh? Or are we just blessed? Who can know?

ScrappleFest
Scrapplefest! at Reading Terminal Market
It’s Not Just for Breakfast Anymore!
Saturday, March 21, 2009

Love it or hate it, Scrapple is the quintessential Pennsylvania breakfast treat. Celebrate all things Scrapple at Scrapplefest! at Reading Terminal Market on Saturday, March 21st from 10 am to 4 pm. Local Scrapple brands will sample their products, chefs will prepare an assortment of scrapple dishes, and a panel of local celebrities will judge the best Scrapple dish in Reading Terminal Market.

Taste of Philadelphia: Market Tours
Every Wednesday & Saturday Learn the story behind cheese steaks, hoagies, pretzels and other Philly food favorites, and the 114-year history of the vibrant Reading Terminal Market where they’re sold during this 75-minute, food-writer-led walking tour.

The tour leaves from the Market information desk at 12th and Filbert streets in the heart of downtown Philadelphia at 10 a.m. every Wednesday and Saturday. Reservations Required.

Cost is $14.95 for adults and $8.95 for children ages 7 to 11. Private tours also available.(reservation info is available at this link)

Every October, Bridgeville, Delaware - home of Rapa Scrapple - hosts the Apple Scrapple Festival, you might want to pencil October 9th and 10th into your calendar now.

“Apple Scrapple” has grown from 2500 visitors in 1992 to over 25,000 now and was incorporated in 2002. It has become a major fundraiser for local community organizations and helps elevate awareness of the agricultural profession in lower Delaware.

Festivities begin at 4:00 pm on Friday evening with the carnival, food court and street dance. Things start up again on Saturday morning with an “all you can eat” scrapple breakfast from 7:00 to 11:00 am. The rest of the day is filled with carnival rides, kids’ games, scrapple chunkin’, scrapple carving, live entertainment, car show, tractor pull, trade show, two craft shows and any kind of food that you can imagine including apple fritters, scrapple sandwiches, oyster sandwiches, hamburgers and hotdogs, barbecue beef sandwiches, ice cream and much more. The Festival is handicapped accessible.

There is something for all ages and all appetites at this exciting event, which begins at 4:00 pm on Friday afternoon and runs until the street dance is over on Saturday evening.

I tried to post some pictures in this post, but our Internet connection is having issues these days and it’s already held up this post for several days so I’m giving up for now and posting. If you search “scrapplefest” at flickr you get all kinds of fun results.

I’d be a bit more persistent about it, but I’m now kind of busy trying to contemplate over 25,000 people celebrating Scrapple.

I thought it was odd that the new Saveur featured a watermelon on the cover in the middle of February. That’s because it’s not the new issue - it’s the September 2008 issue. I’m not sure how I missed it entirely, but I did. Well, it’s new to me so that’s a good enough reason to post about it.

I was disappointed to see that the short article by Tamasin Day-Lewis didn’t include a recipe for the wild partridge roadkill Editor-in-Chief James Oseland mentions in the introductory note. The article by Day-Lewis does include a recipe for grilled steak with sauce vierge, but she probably didn’t stop and pick the steer up off the road. That’s okay, though..

Much more importantly, elsewhere in the issue there are detailed instructions for making Home-Cured Bacon, which I suspect will be a big hit with the recipe testers here at the Meatblog. (Get to work, kids!)

We got so distracted by the article about martinis in yesterday’s Washington Post Food section that we almost forgot to give you the link to the annual CSA directory for the DC area: Where to Sign Up for a CSA.

Also in yesterday’s Food section: a brief review of John Torode’s cookbook, “Beef and Other Bovine Matters.” Torode is the owner of Smiths of Smithfield and a regular food personality on the those chefy sort of shows on the BBC.

The Post tested a few recipes from the book and praised them, although they did offer up alterations that reduced the copious amounts of oil that Torode apparently likes to cook with.

The Linkmeister has been looking out for the MeatBlog. He recently directed us to Making Light, a blog we’d never visited before. They immediately won our hearts when they told of their successful Christmas adventure deep-frying a rib roast. Don’t stop at the end of the post, there’s lots of helpful info in the comments. The step-by-step, with pictures, is here.

I believe these nice folks get bonus points for (Southern) style and execution because they strained and saved the oil from their Thanksgiving deep-frying turkey fun and re-used it for their roast. My grandmother would have approved.

I know we’ll be checking back in on Making Light in the future - especially since they’ve promised to deep-fry a ham for Easter!

Eric shared this delightfully demented Wendy’s training video with Samer and I over a tasty dinner from the Taqueria Poblano.

I don’t believe that any of us will be sleeping well for a while after watching this. On that note, happy new year and enjoy!

Have you ever thought to yourself, “I wish I could carry a meat or meat-like product with me all the time”? Ever thought it would be neat to have a slab of meat play back all your favorite meat music? Ever wanted to pull out a slab of meat from your pocket and say, “it was a slab of meat in my pocket and and I’m glad to see you”?

Well, now you’ve got the chance. Wired brings news of this iPod case from Japan. It even comes in a shrink wrapped butcher’s package. The price is a bit steep at roughly $88, but Wired’s already made the Kobe beef joke.

Long before the dawn of the meatblog, Husband and I would ponder that eternal question, “Who was the first to sell a doughnut burger? The nice folks at A Hamburger Today, one of the Serious Eats spinoff blogs, have been posting on the subject for a nice long time. So rather than write my own post, I’m going to be lazy and refer you to their archive of posts about Doughnut Burgers.

Happy reading!

The Dallas Chicken-fried Steak countdown

I’ve long considered chicken-fried steak to be one of the four basic food groups. My earliest, fondest food memories derive from this regional specialty, and it remains my quintessential “comfort food.” Over the next few months, I’ll be taking a closer look at the state of the dish in Dallas.

The author took that closer look at 50 (fifty) different restaurants, with entertaining and educational results.

[link courtesy of batgirl]

This may be a day late, but I thought it appropriate to at least mention Corned Beef and Cabbage in honor of St. Patrick’s Day.  While some spoil-sports are apparently trying to back out of the tradition, here’s a nice recipe for the rest of us true believers.

I swiped this link from digg. Just in time for St. Patrick’s Day: Guinness Stout Beef Stew.