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Scrapple Review

I was first introduced to scrapple at my boarding school in Middletown, Delaware. I was told, that it had been brought to the school, by a faculty member who grew up in western Pennsylvania.

When scrapple was served, it was on large baking sheets, thrown into the oven to broil until the surface was brown… any number of shades of brown, venturing into black upon occasion.

When presented, there were generally few takers of these darkened trapezoids, but for a few, this mystery meat was very welcomed!

Over the years, and mostly through social media, I have been engaged in many conversations about this ridiculed ‘food’, and have decided to stand up for this wonderful treat brought to us by the Pennsylvania Dutch, also known as panhaas or “pan rabbit”.

The following is my Review of the various Scrapples that I have been able to find, and I look forward to try more!

Cooking

There are several different ways to cook scrapple, and as mentioned earlier, I was first introduced to oven baked, which if not done right, one is trying to eat brick slabs.

For these reviews, I took a scrapple loaf, and cut into 4 equal slabs, roughly 1/2 inch thick, and pan-fried them.

Over the years, I have switched from a dry pan, to either margarine, oil (corn & olive) or butter, depending on what else I am eating or how decadent I am feeling.

In these reviews, I have used margarine and half of a loaf, including side piece.

Why a side piece? – Try it with a lot of butter in a small pan some time! The uneven shape can cook very differently! (I did mention decadent…)

Habbersett Scrapple

“Habbersett brand has been around since 1863. The original facility was located in Media, PA” – Habbersett website

I have eaten, by far, more Habbersett then any other.

I have cooked, grilled, broiled pan and deep-fried this stuff!

It is my “bread ‘n butter” scrapple.

In terms of the loaf, Habbersett reminds me more of a bread loaf than others I have seen, and when cut-up there are more trapezoid shapes. This is the inter geek in me speaking.

Side Piece – Most folks aim for uniform slabs, and miss one of the more tricky parts to cook, but if done right, you can more textures with the finished piece!

Spices – For most, Habbersett seems to be the most peppery of the three that I have tried so far, and because of this, goes very well with scrambled eggs or cheddar cheese!

[Notes/Update]

One reader commented –

I found Habberset to be very greasy and “popped” a great deal when I cooked it. Maybe the grease is what gives it the extra flavor that you like, but I found it to be a mess.” – Peter S

I agree there does appear to be more fat/greasy, which would add to the flavor, but no one can say eating scrapple is healthy! With my 50th right around the corner, I can’t be eating this stuff everyday!

Rapa Scrapple

“In 1926 two brothers from Bridgeville, Delaware founded the RAPA Scrapple manufacturing plant.” – Rapa website

Several of my Delaware based friends have mentioned Rapa, and when I tried this, the first thing that struck me, was how square the loaf was, and a course texture on the outside.

The squareness of the loaf, made cutting the 4 slabs equally, very easy, but for some reason they did seem smaller.

Noting to mention about the pan frying, and I was easily able to get a golden brown crust.

Taste test – The general flavor was rather bland to me, and I did eventually add more salt and ground black pepper to it, but I did like the courser grade of cornmeal.

Hatfield Lean Scrapple

Over 110 years ago John C. Clemens began Hatfield Quality Meats’ tradition of satisfying customers with quality, delicious pork products in the Philadelphia farmer’s markets. ” – Hatfield Quality Meats

I have seen the Hatfield name most of my life when shopping, and they do have some good meats, but I can not say the same for the scrapple.

One of the first things you notice about the package, is “Lean”.

When I first mentioned I was trying Hatfield, a Facebook friend commented “What’s the point in scrapple?!”

I have to agree.

When I unwrapped the loaf, it was also fairly uniform, but with rounded edges. Cutting into quarters was easy, with the cut edges a little but rougher then normal.

Cooking time seemed longer to get the medium brown crust I like, but it could have been that I was hungry.

Finally when I tried my first bites, the spices mixture was very nice, with my pepper than Rapa, but not as much as Habbersett, a nice middle ground for some.

The cornmeal mixture was smaller than Rapa, but for some reason the interior texture did not seem to firm up during cooking, there for a little bit more mushy than the other three.

What did get me was the interior texture, that had not firmed up during cooking.

Stoltzfus Meats

I was on my way back from my parent in Lancaster, and first stopped at Intercourse Canning Company to pick-up some items, and right across the street is Stoltzfus Meats & Deli.

The Stoltzfus Scrapple is as Homemade that you can get, and to say it is fresh, is such an odd statement!

What was also odd to see, were the huge slabs of scrapple (20+ lbs?) just sitting there in the refrigerator case.

I bought a simple pound, namely because I’m only about 30 minutes away, and I don’t think they are going to run out any time soon!

Anyhow, how was it?

I liked it!

I was easily able to get a nice even crush on both sides, mostly from a higher fat content.

As for taste, it is a top contender to Habbersett, with a little less black pepper.

Conclusions (so far)

The single biggest difference between the various scrapples I have tried in the Black Pepper amount.

I also have to tell you, I like Black Pepper a lot, and I’ve been known to unscrew pepper shaker tops because it does not come out fast enough…

So your personal Black Pepper level is going to be your guide.

Another factor, is the dryness of the loaf, and this seems to be due to the coarseness of the grinding of the ingredients, the denser loaves, with a finer mush seems to hold up better during pan fry cooking.

Scrapple Hunting

With this elementary Review of Scrapples done, I have more to seek out.

So far, the single biggest difference that I have tasted is the black pepper level. I for one like, so…

I’m also learning to refine my pan frying techniques to be more consistent, but I have learned the corn to fats & water ratios play an important part when preparing!

In my refrigerator, I have an unopened Kunzler scrapple loaf…

And friends suggesting some of the following:

  • Hershey farm market
  • Shady Maple in East Earl
  • Hughes Delaware Maid Scrapple
  • Greensboro
  • Kirby & Holloway

More Scrapple Info

Videos

Events

If you know more, please let me know, and if you are a maker of scrapple and would like to be added to my review, please contact me!!

BTW – It should be noted, that some of these scrapple producers, do NOT make it easy to find their scrapple products on their websites!

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Kathryn Nevin: BIO

https://www.facebook.com/eagle.editing
https://www.facebook.com/eagle.editing

Although a social worker for 25 years, I have always worked as a writer, editor and proofreader either formally or informally. I started life as a poet with a passion for English language and literature, which led me on an academic path from St. Andrew’s School to Swarthmore College and then to Indiana University (Bloomington, IN). Following a hiatus in Spain, where I taught English as a Second Language, I returned to the U.S. and enrolled for a year at Indiana University’s Ph.D. program. During this year I discovered that I had a passion for helping others as well as a love for writing and literature. As a result, I completed my Master’s in Social Work at Widener University and held a variety of clinical positions, from child welfare to prison social work. The passion to write and edit always continued and finally culminated (or rather, is beginning) in founding my own freelance business, “Eagle-Eye Editing.”

The mission of Eagle-Eye Editing is to provide exceptional and affordable editing services, with particular emphasis on the needs of mental health professionals and social justice organizations. In this way, I get to use both of my passions to help those whose work I love and understand.

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Announcements Blogging Information Networking Online Life Projects Website

Eagle-Eye Editing is in the House of Seymour!

Hello and welcome to the joint venture of Eagle-Eye Editing and Seymour Digital Consulting. It’s a venture infused by the great harmony of the written word and the visual text. It’s also great when childhood bears good fruit; I am grateful to St. Andrew’s School for my connection to Andrew Seymour and for so many other good people and experiences. It was at St. Andrew’s where I first caught two serious viruses that have shaped my life forever — the Poetry Virus and the Editing Virus. They are formidable bugs, but entirely manageable and I expect they will produce even more good in the near future. So — I am happy to be here, happy to be the House Editor and happy to have another place to kick off my shoes. Please stick around for new posts about me, my editing business, and my work here with Andrew. Thanks for your time!

Kathryn’s Other’s Site:

http://www.facebook.com/eagle.editing

Contact me here too!

 

Regards,

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Moving Computers – Lightroom

Adobe Lightroom Icon
Adobe Lightroom Icon

It is always a pain to move to a new computer because there are so many files and settings that need to be redone for the user to really get productive again.

With this idea in mind I offer the following tips and advice in regards to moving an Adobe Lightroom User from one machine to another.

This guide is geared towards people who are technically proficient on the Windows operating system, but should be able to serve as a guide to those working in a Macintosh environment.

If you have any other ideas or tips please feel free to send them my way!

Transferring the Data

As any User of Lightroom knows, the Catalog and Image files are the heart of your work and business, and if you are moving to a new machine, you need to consider what to do with them as you move forward.

On the “C:” drive of Old Machine –

There are several of options available to you, if your original catalogs and Images are still on the main “c:\” hard drive of your old machine.

Transfer files across the Network

If both machines are still attached to a network, you can easily transfer the catalogs across, but that is going to take time, and chew up various network resources.

Remember, depending on the number of Images you have, your catalog directory could easily reach several gigabytes worth of data,in my case: Catalog: 12.7 GBs & Images: 261 GBs

Remove the old hard drive –

If you remove the hard drive, you have two basic options, but before you begin, backup your files on the old machine in your normal manner.

Install in new computer –

By simply taking the hard drive out of the old machine, and installing it into your new machine, is most certainly the easiest of the options, and also gives you a second HD spindle when dealing with I/O operations in Lightroom.

But before you remove the hard drive, be sure to check the compatibility of data interfaces on your new machine – Can the new machine deal with the older IDE interface?

An example I can give, is my new machines, that is based on the Asus Z87-Pro motherboard, which does not have any IDE connections.

Also keep in mind, that if you connect the old “C:” drive, and it wants to reinitialize for whatever reason, and you have not backed up your data…

External case –

This is another good alternative, and does give you the flexibility to move to different environments with little issue, and also gives you the additional spindle speed during I/O, but is subject to the port speed when you plug-in, assuming that the chipset on the external drive is the faster of the two.

Backups

There are three critical areas that need to be transferred to your new machine for it to work in a fashion that you are used to: Images, Catalogs and Preferences.

Images –

Do I really need to say more?

Catalogs –

As mentioned earlier, catalogs can easily reach several gigabytes worth of data, but does all that data need to be transferred to the new computer?

Again Users of Lightroom know, and unless they have change the default settings, the program will prompt you to do backups, which are located in a sub-directory of the main catalog directory.

c:\My.Adobe.Lightroom.Catalog\Backups\

By simply looking into the backup directory, one could easily save time and the amount of data that needs to be transferred, by simply cleaning out old unnecessary files, but this is completely user based.

Just check to see which “Date – Time” named directories really need to be moved.

Preferences –

Since this is most likely a new software install, none of your preferences will be in place, so where are those files located?

Like all other User preferences, they are stored in the operating system’s Users profile directory, that is hidden through the normal interface, that can be easily accessed with a little forethought.

C:\Users\%userprofile%\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Lightroom

Once you are inside Adobe Lightroom directory, it should be very easy to recognize which directories are most important to you.

In my case I transferred files from these directories onto my new machine:

Adobe\Lightroom\Export Presets
Adobe\Lightroom\Filename Templates
Adobe\Lightroom\Import Presets
Adobe\Lightroom\Keyword Sets
Adobe\Lightroom\Locations
Adobe\Lightroom\Metadata Presets
Adobe\Lightroom\Smart Collection Templates
Adobe\Lightroom\Watermarks

Once installed in the new directories, Lightroom should have no issue accessing the “.lrtemplate” files. (BTW – If you really want to be geeky, you can open up these files in a text editor and play with them to your heart’s content)

Conclusion

When I moved to my new machine, I used a combination of techniques described above.

On my old machine, the Lightroom catalogs and images were already located on an internal secondary SATA hard drive, so I just removed the old hard drive, and installed it into the new machine.

From there, I copied the images and catalogs (approx 275 GBs) to the root directory of my new machine, creating a new backup of the files.

Even across the SATA III bus, this still took several hours, and I could smell hard drive smoke. (just kidding!)

When I got to my preferences, I connected to my old machine across the network and simply copied the files into the associated directories.

From there, I reconnected the Lightroom catalogs to the local main image directory, now located on the root of my main “c:\” drive.

Finally, I rewrote my old robocopy script to include the additional external hard drive, that I added for redundancy in my backup solution.

  • HDD1 (1.0 TB) – Enhanced (WDC Black) (Live Data)
  • HDD2 (1.5 TB) – Seagate Barracuda 7200 – Backup 01 (Internal)
  • HDD3 (2.0 TB) – WDC Green – Backup 02 (External)

Some may argue, that having all my data on the “c:\” will produce bottlenecks, while I would agree in theory, I also have to wonder with my usage of Intel’s RST technology, reduces this as an issue.

I have also, set the cache files of both Lightroom and Photoshop, to the extra space left over on my Solid State drive, as mentioned in another post.

If you have any thoughts or ideas I’d be very interested in hearing from you.

Good luck!

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Blogging Equipment Gadgets Hardware How to(s)? Information Personal Reviews Tech Talk

It has been 10 days with Loong

It has been about 10 day, since I first started setting up this machine (Loong), and I thought I would give you a quick update on what has been going on.

In the early morning hours of August 5th, I placed my order with Amazon.com

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and went to bed.

Later on in the morning, my inbox was full of confirmation emails telling me when to expect the various packages over the course of the next few days.

Wednesday morning, the 7th, the first set of boxes arrived, and when I checked my email, it suggested that the rest of my shipment would be at the house by the end of the day!

Talk about excited!

I spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon, reviewing various videos on how to build your machine from scratch, taking particular interest in the application of the CPU thermal heat paste amount. (One of my nervous points)

Between picking up the kids from play dates, and getting dinner on the table, I was not able to finish my build until early evening, and that is when my first hopes were dashed.

The machine would not boot.

After doing my basic troubleshooting, and communicating with several people online, it was determined that the most likely culprit, was the motherboard.

A replacement board was ordered immediately and confirmation notices suggested that by late Friday afternoon, I might be able to begin again.

Now all I could do was wait…

Tick tock… Tick tock…

All I could hear in my head, was Carly Simon’s “Anticipation” song…

FINALLY, around 4 PM the new motherboard arrived!

It was easy for me to reassemble the machine in record time, since I’d had so much practice only hours before…

Then it was the moment of truth… Pressing the on button, I saw the motherboard LED codes change in the CPU fan fire up!

It was finally a success in getting the hardware to work, and I was off for a long night of installing software!

Configurations

I tried two different configurations, especially since I had nothing to lose.

SSD for operating system only –

In this configuration, the goal was to set up the SSD with only the Operating System (Win 7 64-bit), and using the HDD for Applications and Data.

In theory, this would be the fastest configuration on this box, but as I thought about it, and read reviews of the possibly quiet and deadly malfunctions of SSD drives, I decided to reconfigure the box for something a little bit more practical in the event of a failure.

I did not want to rebuild this machine anytime soon.

That being said, and since it was so early in the morning, I decided to download the various patches from Windows update, and returned to the machine when I woke up later.

Saturday – My eagerness to play with my new machine woke me early, and I scurried down stairs to my office with a pot of coffee.

I woke up the box, and was happily greeted with no error messages, but I rebooted the machine, and in standard Microsoft fashion, more updates needed to be installed.

More patching ensued, and the only bottleneck was my access to the Internet, and my kids streaming their various shows from YouTube.

It was amazing that once the files were downloaded, their installation screens zipped across the monitor to the point of not being able to be read the dialog box titles; what use to take minutes on my old machine, now took seconds!

Playing a little more, and seeing the incredible “zippy-ness”, I finally ran the benchmark again, and was very surprised to see it only ranked in the mid-fives.

Now I was on to creating a new configuration that offered more reliability in case the SSD failed.

Hybrid SSD-HHD –

One of the technologies included in the Intel Z87 chipset, is the ability to take advantage of Intel’s Rapid Storage Technology, in which you use both a SSD and HDD drive in conjunction to form a hybrid of the two technologies.

Basically, you install your operating system, in a normal manner, onto the HDD, and after all the RST RAID drivers are installed and operating system is updated and rebooted, you are ready to play.

There was a little catch that I did not pick up on when I was initially configuring my purchase, but I have been able to take advantage of it, as I will describe later.

When configuring the RST RAID drive (or cache drive), there is a limit of 64 GB, which left me with 50% my SSD drive still unused, which initially had me irritated for over purchasing the 128 GB SSD drive in the first place.

After quickly configuring the RST RAID, and rebooting I was now able to “see” the technology in action.

At first, it was definitely faster than running on the HDD alone during the initial set up, but not as “snappy” as the pure SDD OS install.

It does seem to be getting quicker as I move along, and that is what is to be expected in this type of configuration.

The SSD drive, will slowly “learn” about the most commonly used files and cache them to disk. The HDD is now termed “enhanced” on the motherboard’s RAID controller.

In regards to reliability of this configuration, the thinking is, that if the SSD drive fails, the only files that are lost are cached files.

The main “live” data still resides on the HDD drive!

Simple! – (I am keeping my fingers TIGHTLY are crossed now!)

As an amusing little side note, in both configurations, after I installed the base OS, without any Drivers or Updates, the built-in Microsoft App only rank the machine as a 1, but eventually did reach a 7.4.

Current Configuration

As I set off into this new adventure, I have configured my storage drives as follows:

  • SSD1 (128 GB) – RST drive
  • HDD1 (1.0 TB) – Enhanced (WDC Black) (Internal)
  • HDD2 (1.5 TB) – Seagate Barracuda 7200 – Backup 01 (Internal)
  • HDD3 (1.0 TB) – WDC Green – Backup 02 (Internal)
  • HDD4 (2.0 TB) – WDC Green – Backup 03 (External)

And (2) ODDs, which should hold me over for a while..

As it stands now, I only have about 500+ GBs of “live” data that I’m worried about, and this is the first time that I’ve actually had the space on one drive to put everything!

Consolidation of files – It should now be very easy since I’m only dealing with one main directory, and this will make writing a Robocopy backup script incredibly easy!

Installed Software

Google Chrome –

I have not mentioned this until this point, but this is the first time I’ve been able to install the Microsoft operating system, without using Internet Explorer!

Why?

It is because the Asus Z87-Pro mother support DVD, includes and installs Google Chrome, which is VERY nice!

Yes, when I ran Windows update, I did patch, to the best of my knowledge, Internet Explorer, but I have yet to launch it in any way shape or form.

Mozilla Thunderbird –

Talk about installers dream!

I was able to quickly download install the Thunderbird application, and after an initial launch, I exited the program in hopes of establishing the base directory structure.

On a whim, I thought I would try to take my existing Thunderbird email directory from Dragon, and copy it across the network, into the same location in Loong.

Being an old Microsoft Outlook 2007 user, I thought there would be no way this would work, and I’d have to spend time reconnecting my POP accounts and individual PST mailbox files.

To my amazement, when I relaunched Thunderbird the second time, everything popped up right where it should!

That was about an hours worth of configuration and headaches that I didn’t have to encounter!

Adobe Lightroom 5 (64-bit) –

Adobe Lightroom 5 (64-bit) was the first major application that I installed onto Loong.

Since I had already been running LR5 on Dragon, there was nothing really new or interesting yet, I still had not transferred my catalogs or images files, which were still on a backup hard drive.

Adobe Photoshop CS6 (64-bit) –

This was the application I had built this machine for.

You don’t get an Intel i7-4770 for basic word processing.

With that being said, Adobe has made it rather difficult to actually find CS6 for download on their site, which makes sense, when you consider that they are really pushing their new Cloud Computing environment.

In the final hours of configuring the system for software, I thought about CS6 vs CC many times, and it came down to what do you have at the end of your expenditure of money.

Basically, once you stop your subscription to the Adobe cloud, you can’t Open your files, whereas in the purchase of CS6, I still have an application “locally”, and I can do what ever I want with my images. I am not potential held ‘hostage’.

I do plan in the future, to look at and use their single application subscription, but for an application like Photoshop, I feel far more comfortable having a local installation of the software application.

Nuance Dragon NaturallySpeaking 12 –

I have been using Dragon NaturallySpeaking since the late version 10 days, and have always had a sort of love-hate relationship with the software and the company.

Originally, I wanted to try to use my existing version 11 license, but was thwarted when I could not find the 11.5 upgrade file in my backups.

One would think, it would be a simple matter of going to Nuance’s Support page, and download the update, especially as a registered user, but I had forgotten that you lose all support after the initial 30 days of owning the software, and there was no way for me to download the patch.

So I spent several days lamenting on whether I should ‘bite-the-bullet’ and purchase a new license for Loong.

Searching the internet, I was able to find an online deal where I got a new seat for only $75 after various rebates!

After the software arrived, I eagerly installed it, only to find that I had to download a service pack, which is no big deal, per se, if the service patch was in 500 MB to be downloaded!

I also made sure that I backed up the Service Pack file this time, and at the moment, I have not registered.

Once I had Dragon finally patched, I started a new user profile, and I have been using it to create this blog entry, and so far it has been working out very well in terms of speed and accuracy, and as I use it more, it should get better.

Final tweaking

As the title of this blog entry suggests, I’ve been playing around with my system for about 10 days.

I still have not gotten into some of the deeper aspects of the fine tuning of the OS, mainly because the machine is very quick and responsive.

I have copied all my 500GBs of live data from Dragon onto the C drive of Loong, and reestablishing connections in my Lightroom catalogs.

Moving in and out of the various image directories and watching the thumbnails snap up on the screen is very exciting.

I have opened a few of bigger 800+ MB files into Photoshop, there is no hesitation as they jump up on the screen, as I zoom in and out!

Crunching HDR files together is very quick, and should save me countless hours in the future!

WOW!

Then it occurred to me while playing, but I still had some of my SSD disk available to me.

I opened up Disk Manager (diskmgmt.msc), and initialized the remaining SSD partition.

Going back into both Lightroom in Photoshop, I set their cache options to the newly created SSD partition, and relaunched the applications.

Now that it’s fast!

Conclusion

In reading the various manuals, how-to guides, tips and tricks, there is still a lot of things for me to explore and learn on this new machine.

I will continue to post new tidbits as they become available, so do stay tuned!

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