"scrapple" news and stories

I'll explain more later, but for right now, those of you who know what the heck I'm talking about -- wanna take a poll?

As always -- hash it out in the comments below.

If a group of Amish in Ohio have their way, Las Vegas may no longer hold the record for the world's largest buffet.

This past Saturday nearly 600 dishes were served up at the Amish Flea Market in Holmes County. More than 2,000 tickets to the gigantic feed were sold. Talk about your chow lines!

The bill of fare included Hungarian sauerkraut soup, corn casserole and garlic mashed potatoes. By noon 300 dishes had hit the tables; the number to beat was 510. It will be some time before the folks in Holmes County hear back from the powers that be at Guinness. So far there's been no word on how many pounds of scrapple and shoofly pie were dished out.

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The idea behind most food websites, food blogs included, is to write about good food. Good recipes, excellent restaurants and tasty products are among the things frequently written up on these sites. Wild Recipes has a slightly different goal, however. The site is dedicated to the weirdest, most outrageous - by which they usually mean disgusting - foods that people actually eat.

Old fashioned scrapple, Rocky Mountain oysters, head cheese and brains are all included on the site, but there are far stranger dishes than the ones that simply involve cooking the less appetizing bits of animals. For example, how would you feel about a Spam milkshake (pictured) with anchovies, mustard and beer? Or would you be likely to put a few slices of Cheddar cheese in your morning coffee then "slurp down the glob of melted cheese" once you've finished off the liquid? Granted, the cheese coffee is unappealing in a way that is different from the "oysters," but that doesn't make it any less disgusting.

Most of the entries have recipes should you be so inclined to try them and there are seven pages of dishes to choose from, and just about all of them are accompanied by a story describing how the submitter first came across the dish.

[via neatorama]

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Is there such a thing? According to a story in the Chicago Tribune (republished here by the Lexington Herald-Leader), there is. After wondering at length about the need for wheat protein turkeys and "meatless balls," the piece goes on to praise Chicago restaurateur Ina Pinkney (right) of Ina's for her meatless scrapple. Her recipe still uses cornmeal as a binder, but puts corn and black beans where the miscellaneous meat would normally go. The breakfast menu at Ina's still serves it with chorizo and eggs, however. Apparently there's also a vegetarian scrapple recipe in Country Scrapple, a book detailing the dish's origins. Still, I'd imagine that the word scrapple might carry some unwanted connotations for vegetarians, unless of course they have some sort of nostalgia for it.