Scrapple is classic country breakfast food, best when fried in bacon grease and served hot with honey or maple syrup on top. For more authenticity, top with sorghum molasses. You can get a debased version of this without the pork at places like Bob Evans, but if you want the good stuff, just get on the highway and drive south until you find a diner with the real thing. Another recipe my mother was taught by locals in the Smoky Mountains when she was a kid.
1 lb or less leftover roast pork, minced fine
(I have also used ham, or smoked rib tips that have been boiled all to hell)
2 cups yellow corn meal
2 quarts rich meat stock
(boiled up from lots of gristly meat for the natural gelatin)
8 T (1 stick) real butter
1 T salt
1 t black pepper
2 T rubbed sage
1 t crushed dried oregano
Boil the stock up with your seasonings. When your stock is boiling, whisk in the corn meal, stirring plenty so it doesn’t lump up. Add the stick of butter and stir until the butter’s melted in. Add the meat now, if it’s not already pretty shredded up. Turn down the heat and let it all bubble, stirring and scraping now and then to make sure it don’t burn on. The meat should end up in shreds, and the corn meal should thicken up a lot while it cooks. You’ll have trouble stirring it.
After about 15 or 20 minutes of this, taste it to make sure the corn is all cooked and not grainy any more.
Turn your scrapple into a greased glass bread loaf pan. Cool it, then refrigerate it, covered with saran wrap laid right on the surface of the scrapple to prevent it from drying out.
When you want to eat it, slice it thick or thin, fry it until crusty in bacon grease on a hot iron pan or griddle, and serve with honey or maple syrup or sorghum syrup. Some people put butter on top, too.
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My first novel, Trash Sex Magic, is still available in ebook, although even used copies of the paper edition are getting thin on the ground. Must be all that sex. This story is about trailer trash sex magicians, and a tree that was once a man and is now a god. On page one, real estate developers buy the land and cut the tree down, killing him, and sex miracles spray all over the landscape. The heroine is from a local family of hussies. She has four days to find another man to take his place. Find it here.
