Scrapptacular (Or How, when Life gives you Lemons, you Sometimes make Lemon Mush)

One of my guilty little pleasures (read: one of my primary past times) is watching the Food Network. Why, you might ask? Maybe because I always watched it when I was sick in Middle School, back when the show "How To Boil Water" was on. It featured a two-bit internet comedian who pimped is AOL Keyword "LOL" on-air. The internet was still this shocking new idea that was only available from CompuSERV or AOL (we had the former) and I couldn't exactly figure out what the fuck "Elle-Oh-Elle" had to do with Comedy. Oh to be naive again.

Anyway, one of the shows I end up watching a lot of on the Food Network is Ace of Cakes, since the girlfriend loves to muse of Wedding Cakes designed by famous dudes, and I like preposterous ideas. As we've watched more of that show, I've wanted many different cakes: one of the Millennium Falcon, one of a Viking Ship, one of Zombies, and one of a giant Chicago-Style Hot Dog. Now, I wanted a the Millennium Falcon atop a Chicago-style Dog floating in a Viking Ship piloted by Zombies. Dope.

Lead Cake Yogi and total Badass Duff wanted a cake that looked like it was made from Meat, and unitentionally introduced me to a miracle of (not so) modern pork products: Scrapple. According to Ace of Cakes, as well as the Wiki article about it, its mostly a Mid-Atlantic regional food, so I was really surprised when I found it in a Peoria grocerie store a couple weeks ago.

Tonight, I tried it.

After opening the package, it smelled an aweful lot like regular breakfast sausage, although maybe with a hint more sage. The packaging called for 8-10 minutes frying on either side, so I popped it in the pan and worked on the rest of my Breakfast for Dinner Extravoganza.

Plating up the five slabs of meat product, it definately resembled breakfast sausage at this point, as well. The first bite revealed Scrapples true colors. The mealiness, soft texture contrasted sharply with the crispy edges, conjuring up images of men in big rustic hats circled round the chuckwagon, talking about the latest cattle drive and how darn taste this handy pork-n-corn product Cooky had whipped up tasted. If breakfast sausage patties are cordless phones, and Spam is the Communicator from the original Star Trek series, Scrapple is the Old Timey wood box phone that lives on the wall and has a crank.

The only difference? The operator oinks. And probably nobody but Sulu had ever been to Hawaii.