You can't spell scrapple without "crap"

I was working at an Internet start-up about antiques a few years ago. I can't remember how the subject even came up, but I mentioned that I liked scrapple to a co-worker. She made one of those faces of disgust when I told her what it was made of and she said that she wouldn't eat anything that had the word "crap" in it.

For the uninitiated, scrapple is a Pennsylvania Dutch specialty consisting of pork and cornmeal. It is like mush but is then fried and usually served at breakfast like bacon or sausage. What makes it unappealing to some is that the pork part of scrapple can be any part of the pig. It can consist of pig hearts, tongue, liver, anything that is left over. The saying about scrapple is that it is made of "everything but the oink".

Well this past weekend, I went to visit some relatives in Philadelphia and then decided to take a day trip to Lancaster. I love to eat at the Amish style restaurants where I can get my fill of fried chicken, buttered noodles, and vegetables. I especially like the sweet dried corn. In fact that was one of the main reasons to head to Pennsylvania Dutch was so I can buy a few boxes of Cope's Corn. They are hard to find outside of Pennsylvania Dutch and when you do, they cost quite a bit.


But getting back to scrapple. The first stop was for breakfast at Dienner's Country Restaurant in
Ronks, Pennsylvania. They offer a breakfast buffet that is not as varied as an Old Country Buffet but they offer many dishes from the area. The most important dish to me was the scrapple. They offered the scrapple made with pork and for the more health conscience I guess, they had a turkey one too ("everything but the gobble?"). They also had pancakes, sausage, home fries, scrambled eggs, fruit, oatmeal, grits, biscuits and sausage gravy, smoked sausage, french toast, and few more items. The quality is not bad and it only cost $5.95. By the way did I mention they had scrapple?

After a big breakfast, I headed out to do some shopping. There are quite a few outlet stores in the area. The place is geared towards tourists with lots of shopping and family chain restaurants. It is quite a dizzying mix when you consider that many Amish residents live in the area and can be seen on the main roads riding their horse and buggy. What I find kind of amusing is that there are some Amish that will wear most of the traditional dark clothing but will wearing Croc shoes or driving a mini-van. Then again, I shouldn't be making any stereotypes. While at Dienner's the waitress came up to me and seeing that I am Asian asked if I had food like this in my country. Being the 6th generation living in the United States, I could have made a smart remark but refrained so and just said that I had been to that restaurant before.

Just before leaving Lancaster to head back to New York, I decided to get an early dinner. I had been to many other Amish family style restaurants like Miller's, Plain and Fancy, Stoltzfus, and others. I was looking to at least get some dried sweet corn and not pay the arm and a leg that some of those buffets charge. Granted many of those places offered discount coupons on the Internet and travel guides but they still can be pretty pricey.

After looking at menus and reviews, I chose to go to The Family Cupboard. The reviews on Yelp were pretty good and someone mentioned that they had the dried corn there. Plus their buffet was under $11. I got there around 3:30pm, just before they were switching over to dinner. Maybe that was the reason but the food and choices were only OK. They had fried chicken, baked chicken, chicken and dumplings, beef tips in gravy, ham, and an assortment of vegetables from mashed potatoes, carrots, green beans, beets, beans, and sweet shoe peg corn.

But they didn't have the dried sweet corn. What a bummer! And to make matters worse was the food was only OK. Except for the fried chicken and only by a little bit, you can do just as well at Old Country Buffet. The buttered noodles looked exceptionally vile, just a heap of over cooked pasta that was disintergrating in to itself. It wasn't terrible and the people were nice but there are so many other places to try in the area that I won't be heading back.

They're baaaaack!

Holy crap! While driving to a McDonald's to use their free Wi-Fi to download the day's copy of the Sunday newspaper on to my Kindle, I saw a sign that they were selling the McRib sandwich. I had already eaten but I made a mental note to come back another day.

The McRib sandwich is McDonald's faux pork sandwich, consisting of processed pork that is molded into the shape of mini-pork ribs served on a bun with lots of sweet barbecue sauce. The sandwich is not a regular item on the McDonald's menu and would sporadically show up for limited times around the country. The sandwich has a cult like following with people tracking and traveling around the U.S. to partake in the McRib.

Last year McDonald's had brought back the McRib nation-wide for a limited time around this time of year and had a huge success with it. I guess due the popularity they are bringing the sandwich back again nation-wide this year for a 3-week period until November 14th.

There has been no word so far if the McRib will become a regular item on the menu or if this will be an annual event like their Shamrock shakes or cherry baked pies. Maybe I will celebrate Halloween with a McRib meal. Now Count Floyd, that's scary.

Wegmaniacs

Not only do I like to try different restaurants, I also like to go visit local supermarkets when I travel. I look for items that are local to the area or not available where I live. So when I heard that a Wegman's was opening up their first store in Massachusetts it kind of piqued my interest.


I must say that I was more interested in seeing if this upstate New York grocery chain was going to carry white hots more than anything else. I haven't had one of those white veal hot dogs in about 2 years and I was even thinking of traveling over 500 miles round trip to pick up a box until I thought better of it. With the price of gas it would just be smarter to have them shipped to me. Then again, no one ever said I was smart...

Still, going to Northboro, MA was about an hour away from where I was this weekend. Just to make sure that a trip to Wegmans would not be all in vain, I sent an e-mail to the company asking if this store was going to carry the white hots. To my surprise they promptly replied that they would.

I guess that I shouldn't have been surprised that they got back to me so fast. After looking at their website and reading stories about the grocery chain they are quite popular to shop at and to work for. They are very big on not just low prices but on great customer service. It looked like people even get fanatical about the stores, kind of like those people who travel the country going to Chik-Fil-A restaurants.


According to some news reports, the store was involved with town officials about having enough police around to help with the extra traffic. At some grand openings they have had over 30,000 people show up on the first day. I must admit I was getting kind of excited about this. How can a supermarket generate this kind of interest? It sounds insane, but at least I will be able to get my white hots.

This new store is the first in Massachusetts and it is one of the largest in the whole state. It took Wegmans a dozen years to move into the Bay State and supposedly the other grocery stores tried to lock up leases on places that Wegmans was looking to move so they could not move into the state. The reports also said that Wegmans can be a game changer in the area as they not only have thousands more items on their shelves but they price some of their items for the whole year!

The store's grand opening was at 7am but I wasn't going to get up early to travel an hour for a grocery store. I got to the area around noon time. I didn't get to the store until about 12:30pm. For 30 minutes I waited in traffic to get into the parking lot. The whole place was packed. There were lots of police officers to help with the traffic but there were too many cars heading to the store.

When I did get into the parking lot, there were officers there too to help direct traffic. They even had people on those Segways running around the parking lot. I ended up parking about 1/4 mile away from the store.

People were streaming in and out of Wegmans. It was pretty funny to think about it, that all of this was for a grocery store. The aisles were packed with people and sometimes you bumped your cart into someone in front of you or you got hit yourself. One lady accidentally hit a little girl, it wasn't a hard hit but the 6-year was on the verge of crying a tear but not before giving one of the nastiest dirty looks at the lady with the cart. It was pretty funny.


It was hard to more around but I did pass by the food court section. They were serving all kinds of hot foods and even had a dim sum bar. I just didn't feel like fighting through the mob to take a look.

Not being a fan of crowds I used my store map to go find my white hots which were in the dairy section at the back of the store. When I got there I didn't see them. They had all kinds of hot dogs, but then at the bottom was an empty space with a sign in front of it. It said, "Sorry to our upstate New York fans, but they were sold out. New shipment, tomorrow".

To say the least I was pretty bummed. I was not able to get the white hots but it was so busy that I really couldn't see what else they had in the store. The few quick glances at items as I worked my way through the crowd were some pretty good prices and items that are not usually available in Boston nor New York city.

The trip was an experience. It is hard to imagine that so many people are fans of a supermarket, that they even call themselves "Wegmaniacs" and even have t-shirts made up for them. The prices looked pretty good so I will go back again, at least to get some white hots.