Today we celebrate a Mid-Atlantic ethnic comfort food, the Scrapple. This day is observed annually on November 9th.
If you are originally from Pennsylvania, you probably know what Scrapple is. It is different from Spam because they are not made from pork ham meat and don’t use potato starch as a binder. And we all know it is not a meatloaf because it is not made from ground beef.
Scrapple is known by the Pennsylvania Dutch name Pannhaas or “pan rabbit”. They are made from the mush of pork scraps and trimmings combined with cornmeal and wheat flour, often buckwheat flour, and some spices. Typically, it is made from hog offal, such as the head, heart, liver, and other pork trimmings, boiled with bones attached to make the broth. Once cooked, bones and fat are removed and reserved. Cornmeal is added to the broth to make a mush, the meat is finely minced and returned to the pot and seasoned with thyme, sage, black pepper, and others. The mush is formed into loaves, cooled thoroughly until set.
Scrapple is usually eaten as a breakfast side dish. It is sometimes coated with flour then pan-fried in butter or sometimes deep-fried in oil. It can be served plain or with either sweet or savory condiments like apple butter, ketchup, jelly, maple syrup, honey or mustard.
So, today, celebrate this day by eating some scrapple. If you are from Philadelphia or Mid-Atlantic region, you can probably find some scrapple served in some restaurants. Share on social media if you have a special recipe for Scrapple using #ScrappleDay.
1990 Willie Nelson’s assets are seized by the IRS
“We try to work with taxpayers,” Internal Revenue Service spokeswoman Valerie Thornton told The New York Times in the autumn of 1991, “and if we have to come up with some creative payment plan, that’s what we’re going to do, because it’s in everyone’s best interest.” The creative payment plan to which Ms. Thornton was referring in her statement to the Times involved a unique revenue-sharing agreement negotiated between the IRS and the beloved country singer Willie Nelson, who was then struggling to repay a $16.7 million dollar tax debt that had led the federal government to seize all of his assets one year earlier, on November 9, 1990
Willie Nelson landed himself in tax trouble as a result of investments he made in the early 1980s in a tax shelter later ruled illegal by the IRS. With interest and penalties on top of his original unpaid taxes, Nelson was facing a tax bill in excess of $16 million, and though his lawyers convinced the IRS to accept a $6 million cash payment to settle the entire debt, even this was more than Nelson was able to pay, despite being perhaps the most bankable country-music star of the day. “He didn’t have $1 million—he probably didn’t have $30,000,” his daughter, Lana Nelson, told Texas Monthly magazine of her famously generous and free-spending father. In anticipation of negotiations with the IRS breaking down, Willie Nelson had his daughter remove his beloved guitar, Trigger, from his Texas home and ship it to him in Hawaii, where he was golfing when the feds raided his home on November 9, 1990. “As long as I got my guitar,” Willie Nelson said, “I’ll be fine.”
Ultimately, Nelson did get to keep his guitar and even got his Texas ranch back, but not before the government auctioned his home to the highest bidder in January 1991. That bidder, however, was a Nelson fan who purchased the ranch at the behest of a group of farmers who threw their support behind Nelson in thanks for his work in organizing the Farm Aid charitable concerts.
(excerpted from https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/willie-nelsons-assets-are-seized-by-the-irs)
