Scrapple

On Mondays, John Ferroni makes sausage in his small shop at the intersection of Routes 841 and 41 in the village of Chatham in London Grove Township. On Tuesdays, he makes scrapple. On Wednesdays and Thursdays, he delivers his products to stores and other outlets. Villagers know, however, that they also can stop into his well-worn shop, marked only with a pink flag that has a pig on it, to buy some of the scrapple or sausage that has been a Ferroni family tradition since the late 1880s.

The Trocadero is always a busy place, but this week it's ridiculous. There's a noteworthy show happening nearly every night at the Chinatown venue. On Saturday, it's an oddball bill with Juliana Hatfield and Jeff Buckley. Hatfield's a formidable songwriter, but her little-girl voice and crunchy guitar begins to wear on Only Everything (Mammoth/Atlantic). She hasn't hit the sweet spot with an album's worth of tunes since 1992's Hey Babe. It'll be fascinating to see what her teeny-bopper fans think of Buckley, whose lushly romantic croon, Robert Plant wail and unabashed indulgence made last year's Grace an oft-brilliant, oft-difficult listen.

In the early-morning hours of June 13, six Philadelphia chefs began filling their trunks with meticulously organized containers and coolers, each vessel stocked with the raw materials necessary to execute an elaborate, $170-a-seat dinner at New York's James Beard House. One unmistakable foodstuff, however, had been fully prepared ahead of time. "We wanted to bring a little Philly up with us," said the event's organizer, Mémé's David Katz. "So we brought scrapple. " This was no processed slab of gray, store-bought mush.

The crowds inside and outside of Franklin Field add to the unique atmosphere at the Penn Relays, and the Spring-Ford girls' 4x400-meter relay team received further confirmation about what makes the event special. "We were at one of the stands getting food and we met an older couple from St. Louis," Spring-Ford coach Ken D'Angelo said. "They were getting cheesesteaks and we struck up a conversation. They said they usually go to the Drake Relays, and my assistant asked them to compare Drake and Penn.

For the Phillies' seventh season at Citizens Bank Park, concessionaire Aramark wanted to throw a little change-up in the hot dog routine. Not that hot dogs are unpopular. Last season, Aramark sold 1,314,223 hot dogs at the ballpark. The Center City-based food giant wanted to create a signature variety for its home team - something memorable, something that says Philadelphia and baseball . Aramark decided that the meaty matter would be put to a fan vote. Three choices were unveiled online last month, and all were sampled at the ballpark during last week's two preseason games.

Some of the Republican Party's wealthiest donors gathered at the Main Line's grandest estate yesterday, where the linen-draped tables, extravagant floral arrangements, and heavy silverware might have led them to expect a spread of champagne and caviar. This being Philadelphia, they got scrapple. "It's like pork mush, isn't it?" said Ohio Rep. Dave Hobson, sampling a fried scrapple square daubed with apple chutney. His wife, Carolyn, shook her head warningly. "You don't want to know," she murmured.

The palest of morning suns is just over the hump of Tussey Mountain. Gales of snow are whipping across the country lane in the subzero temperature. And the tattered green farmhouse is dripping with two-foot icicles. But clouds of steam already are piling into the frigid air from the outdoor scalding trough and the cast-iron cooking kettles. A dozen cars are crammed in the snow just beyond Herb Rudy's barn. And Rudy, with his knife, and Jake Wheeland, with his .22 rifle, are up in the pig pen trying to corner another pig. Here in the frost-bound valley between Tussey and Bald Eagle Mountains, in the frozen heart of a central Pennsylvania winter, the 137-acre Rudy farm is alive this morning with friends and relations, with corny jokes and spat tobacco juice, with steaming cinnamon rolls and sawed-up hogs.

The city of scrapple is trashing Coney Islands? Whoa! Wait a minute! I think this Philly Phlyer Phanaticism is becoming a problem for the Inquirer Editorial Board ("Cup de grace," May 31). As a former Detroiter living in the Philadelphia area for the last 8 1/2 years, I have become acclimated to things Philly style. And while I agree with many of the editorial's "Top 10 Reasons Philadelphia Deserves the Cup More Than Detroit," I must take exception to No. 10. Obviously, whoever wrote this editorial only ate a Coney Island Hot Dog at the Detroit Airport.

Attention, burned-out city dwellers, weary of concrete horizons. Nothing quite renews the soul like a weekend down on the farm or in the country, far away from hot blacktop and steaming garbage. Not your own farm, of course - too much work, too much cash. No one wants to work in this heat, and you know the story about cash. But you yearn to watch foals play in the paddock or sheep graze in the meadows. Where you can listen to cows lowing or rise early to milk them. Where, after a country breakfast of homemade bread and farm-fresh eggs, you can roam through fields, breathe fresh air and then fish in the creek or read under the shade of a 200-year-old tree.