Some people just don’t get it. They want everyone to ooh and ahh over them as if they were culinary Lewises and Clarks, when in reality, they think that cheese from a can is “neato.”
I discovered a newish [web magazine](http://www.culinate.com) recently when they chronicled [Tana Butler's breathtaking blog](http://smallfarms.typepad.com), which visually depicts sustainable farms all over California. A lot of what I read on the mag is good, much of it is entertaining. Then, I read a competent but hardly life-changing [article about mail-order foods](http://www.culinate.com/read/bacon/Hard+times).
The author goes on and on about all these super neato cheap foods of yore, and wouldn’t it be a shame if this obscure digestive from New England went the way of the dodo (it would).
He then goes on to take a potshot at scrapple:
>Finally, there’s the peasant food I haven’t ordered yet and have no intention of doing so, even though I’m sure I will hear from its partisans… (*little did he know -ed*) Scrapple is a traditional Pennsylvanian loaf of spiced hog offal and cornmeal. “Served warm and browned, the taste will bring you back to the old farm kitchen where it originated over 200 years ago,” Kunzler says of its scrapple, and I have no reason to doubt this.
Are you f-ing kidding me? Someone who goes on for 88 words about salt cod and bemoans the fall from popularity of a cracker that was replaced in large part by drywall, then goes on to be coy about *scrapple*?
I was tempted to file this under the preexisting tag “asshole” but I felt that would be unfair to this competent but disingenuous person, thus the new category “hypcorisy.” I know you’re all dying to hear my response (since you were too enraptured by my siren song to click the link and read the article) so here it is, however reserved:
>Although I did enjoy this column, I take issue with your depiction of scrapple as a mystery meat product to be avoided. Quality scrapple- however dichotomous that may sound- is made only partially from offal, and then only the liver and heart, the same two organs without which most country pates would be bland, textureless meatloaves. The majority of it is made from the meat of the head, neck and other areas where small amounts of meat are held hostage by the shape of the bones around it; it is a dish of economy from a culture who writes a rich and long chapter of the history of America’s indigenous cuisines.
>And let’s face it, if you cut away the schoolyard humor and look at the reality of the food before you, I’d say to a novice of both, salt cod would be much less appetizing.
I am a model of restraint.
Listening: Public radio at the moment, but I listened to Tortoise’s TNT in its entirety twice in the last three days. Good stuff.
