Recipe – Vegan Philly-Style Scrapple

Vegan Philly-Style Scrapple

I saw a photo of some Vegan Scrapple the other day and thought that it would not meet the mark with me.

But quite frankly I can longer eat a lot of meat or meat by-products because of health reasons.  Organ meat from inside the animal is supposed to be high in cholesterol.

So rather than be disappointed by yet another too expensive “Vegetarian” meat substitute that tastes like Play-Doh (figuratively speaking), I decided to make my own Vegan Philly-Style Scrapple.

And the Philly kind has always been the Pennsylvania Dutch version. The Pennsylvania “Dutch” were of course “Deutsche” (a corruption of the pronunciation over the years) who came over at William Penn’s invitation almost as soon as he got here in the early 1680s.

A lot of the present Scrapple products do not measure up in my memory to taste like they did when I was a kid. Of course we are talking decades but the real flavor I miss most is the hot pepper flavor of fresh ground black pepper which the modern machine made stuff seems to lack, perhaps lost in the shelf life marketing thing.

Scrapple in its inception was a product to use all the extra body parts of the pig that might not be used otherwise directly. The primary part of scrapple has been basically ground up pig’s liver and mixed into a basic corn meal mush or polenta molded food product. This chilled and sliced and fried on a hot iron skillet without a lot of fat to facilitate cooking. A lot of that fat in scrapple was already in the product by grinding up flesh and pig fat along with the liver.  As such, a slice of scrapple on a preheated iron skillet has never needed additional fat in the frying pan when cooking at a low heat.  The product should be self-lubricated in the frying pan.

I use some Canola oil in the recipe below to lubricate the molded polenta product in the frying pan and cooked on a low flame once a higher pre-heated temperature has been achieved.

I for the sake of looking for a similar texture to scrapple decided on mixing the corn meal with Irish oats. I do not use the American style oats of any kind. I wanted an original European style oats for taste and texture, far superior to any American big corp. processed oats.

I do not know how to describe the kind of Irish oats (steel cut, quick, whole, old-fashioned etc.­) I use in comparison to American style recipes. So for the sake of this recipe I mention a specific product and its cooking time, and I am certain you may have your own favorite pure food oats product. The product is Flahavan’s Irish Oats and this particular box is available in American stores. They cook in three minutes.

The other product I use is Indian Head Stone Ground Corn Meal for the polenta part of the recipe.

The recipe has two pots on the stove at one time. Per careful and take your time. Start with the Corn Mean cooking as it takes about 20 minutes and the Oatmeal cooking only takes three minutes.

The two grain mixtures will be blended together when the corn meal is done. Canola oil goes into corn meal cooking with the boiling water mentioned below. Natural soy sauce goes into oatmeal just before blending with cornmeal. The soy sauce is both a seasoning element and for a natural traditional scrapple color. All dry seasoning and dry herbs go in last.

Start with assembly of seasonings and dry herbs.

1 tsp. Marjoram

1 tsp. Thyme

1 tsp. Oregano

1 tsp. ground Sage

1 tsp. Garlic Powder

2 tsp. Salt

2 tsp. Ground Black Pepper

Dash of ground Allspice

Set herb mixture aside.

Start cooking the corn meal

1 cup cold water

1 cup Corn Meal

Mix in pot.

Add 2 cups boiling water from tea kettle

Add 1-1/2 tbs. Canola Oil

Cook, stirring frequently, according to package instructions. Approximately 20 minutes.

Meanwhile combine 3/4 cup Irish Oats with 1-1/2 cups cold water. Cook according to package instructions. Mixture has less water than recommended but you want an oatmeal mixture thick with less water in terms of combining with cooked corn meal and molding. Approximately 3 minutes. Set aside. Cover to retain heat.

Finish corn meal cooking.

Add 2 tbs. Soy Sauce and mix into oatmeal mixture.

Combine cooked Oatmeal and Polenta mixture in pot.

Add seasonings and herbs. Mix. Pour into greased loaf pan. Let sit until completely cool. 1-2 hours.

Cover. Put in refrigerator overnight or 8-12 hours. Keep refrigerated until consumed.

Take out of frig. Unmold.

Cut into thin slices or desired thickness. Cook in preheated iron skillet or flat iron griddle on low to medium heat depending on how close you want to monitor cooking. Cooking time approximately 10 minutes on each side.

Serve with ketchup, mustard, honey, maple syrup or whatever you desire. Enjoy.

Yum.

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Green Bean Four Can Casserole - An American Nostalgic Holiday Favorite - Just like Mom used to Cook - Yum Yum

Recipe:

Do not drain green beans.

Mix with Cream of Mushroom soup

Bake in Casserole Dish 350F for 25 minutes

Add Onion Rings on top. Cook another 5 minutes.

Serve with love and memories.

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Dolan/Obama Boloney and Bean Chowder Recipe

"If life hands you lemons, make lemonade." - anonymous

If life hands you a "hill of beans" Timmy, make bean soup.

Dolan/Obama Boloney and Bean Chowder Recipe


1 cup large dry lima beans
4 cups water
1 envelope onion soup mix
1 teaspoon instant chicken bouillon granules 
1 16 ounce can tomatoes, cut up
4 ounces chunk boloney, coarsely chopped
1 cup milk

Directions

Rinse beans.
Place in large saucepan and add water.
Soak overnight. (Or, bring beans to boiling; reduce heat and simmer 2 minutes. Remove from heat. Cover; let stand 1 hour.) 
Do not drain.
Add dry soup mix and chicken bouillon granules.
Bring to boiling.
Reduce heat and simmer, covered, till beans are tender, about 1 1/4 hours.
Add the undrained tomatoes, boloney, and milk.
Heat through, stirring occasionally.

http://www.ifood.tv/recipe/thrifty-bologna-bean-chowder

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All religion is politics. All religion is local.

Judaism, Christianity, Islam are not religions so much as political parties. Their founders - Moses, Constantine and Mohammed were all generals.  Politics and war came first in the founding of these ideologies.


If an outer space alien could communicate with me in English, a language I am a master of, and ask the 64 trillion dollar question about what is all this religious strife on planet Earth about, well here goes.


Do Jews, Christians and Muslims worship the same abstract idol and or God? NO!


Definitely not!


A Muslim’s mother’s beef stew is not the same as a Christian’s mother’s beef stew.  


Only momma knew how to cook beef stew. 


For you to compare my mother’s beef stew to your mother’s beef stew is an insult to my mother and to me. 


And there you have modern religion; same as ancient religion.


All religion is local – just like politics.  All belief in God is local as well.


That’s the point with ancient paganism when it went up against the corrupted form of Judaism aka as Christianity.  They were going up against the abstract of One God in One Temple in Jerusalem.  There were no annex temples in the ancient holy land.  God had no vacation homes.


The Jews had one God and he along with his consort Asherah were worshipped in the great temple of Solomon until the Babylonian captivity. 


When the Jews did come back from Babylon, along with their Babylonian concubines, they rebuilt the mud hut, the great temple of Solomon.  They discarded Asherah.  The feminine side of their god disappeared.  God evolved, he then had a male side only.  Christianity is based on Judaism and Islam is framed on these two previous male only gods/politick/religions.  


Of course the Jewish god only talks Hebrew.  The Christian god only talks Aramaic, Greek and Latin.  And the Muslim god only understands Arabic.  One idea.  Three different gods.  E Pluribus Unum?  Hardly.


So when the Roman Nazis come along and could not impose Roman politics onto Jerusalem, they destroyed the Temple.  The genie was out of the bottle.  Because once you remove the geography of the abstract Jewish god, anybody including the Christians or the Muslims can add on their mom’s recipe for beef stew to the traveling ghost of a concept of one God in that god’s diaspora.


Yahweh was destroyed in 70 A.D./C.E..  All the kings horses and all the kings men could not put Yahweh back together again or at least serve the same beef stew ever again.


While the Jews, as the object of their inspirations and prayers, point back to a temple god of two thousand years ago, the Christians point back to general Constantine’s mom’s beef stew recipe, the Nicenian  heresy, and the Muslims look to the Kaaba.
 
Hinduism, which absorbed all local gods as it evolved as a political entity, let the local deities stand and evolve too along side the poltical “religion” etc..  Ironically, here is a quote from what appears to be a polytheistic culture about the weird unrealistic concept of a one god – a one size fits all deity.  


Why are there so many Gods in Hinduism?

God is one. There is only one Real and True God who does not have any form or a name. It can neither be described, thought of or conceived through human faculties. But since we are so many, each one of us conceives God according to our attitude, view points and state of life -- just as a woman can be looked upon differently by different people: mother, by her children; wife, by her husband; sister, by her sisters; daughter, by her parents; granddaughter, by her grandparents; sister-in-law, by her husband's brother, etc. The woman is one and the same, but she is viewed differently by each one of her relatives. Similarly, we look upon the same God in many ways.

I believe most Hindu’s are vegetarians.  I therefore probably cannot compare their politics/religion with my mom’s one true authentic recipe for beef stew.

 

Whatever. 

In most ancient cultures, the heart was the center of intellect and intuition.  In their hearts, Jews, Christians and Muslims perhaps understand and commune with the same God. But using a scientific metaphor – language, words, geography  – in other words, a form of gravity is introduced into the equation  – which confuses the perfection of the human heart with the questions and imperfections of the human brain with its tags and labels.

If man is both part beast and part angel, the question of - do Muslims and Christians worship the same God? – who is asking the question - why - and in what force of gravity present?