THE BALLOON MAN

Bridgeville keeps it sizzling all day
Slice after slice, crowd scoops up scrapple

Cecelia Evans of Federalsburg (left) and Nancy Ricketts of Bridgeville keep up with demand at the Bridgeville Charge concession stand.

WILLIAM BRETZGER/THE NEWS JOURNAL
from---wilmingtonnewsjournal.del
By James Fisher
The News Journal
BRIDGEVILLE — Apples get the glory at the Apple Scrapple Festival, but scrapple does the work.

The town-wide festival held the second weekend in October draws an estimated 25,000 or so visitors over two days. It was created 20 years ago to celebrate apple fields around town and the RAPA scrapple plant that produces Bridgeville’s most famous product – scrapple, the dense, gristly processed meat made from the livers, snouts, hearts, and fat of pigs, with spices, cornmeal and flour mixed in.

Apples shone in the spotlight on Friday, when the T.S. Smith & Sons farm sponsored an apple dessert contest. Garrett Briggs, 10, of Greenwood won the youth competition with a ricotta apple pie, and Lia Workman of Millsboro brought an apple cinnamon cheesecake that triumphed in the adult category. Apple walnut muffins from a general store on Tilghman Island, Md., won in the professional class, with all the winners honored on an outdoor stage Friday afternoon.
All the while, workmanlike scrapple was being readied for a hungry populace. On Thursday night, volunteers with the Bridgeville Senior Center spent hours slicing up scrapple by hand for use in a food tent. Dixie Semans, the senior center’s kitchen manager, said her crew of volunteer cooks came to the festival with enough scrapple and white bread for 10,000 sandwiches.

“We’ll use up everything,” she said Saturday as a formidable line of people gathered to by $5 sandwiches. “We’ll stay here until it’s all sold.”

Often eaten for breakfast, in a sandwich or on a plate with eggs or pancakes,