Use it up!

Motorists who like to avoid Maryland's Eastern Shore traffic jam on their way to Ocean City, and the other beach resorts down that way, sometimes resort to driving through Delaware, a state known as "Speedtrap Alley" to those who have come in contact with representatives of the First State's various police agencies.

But along the way, I always noted the presence of a scrapple factory, which is where a semi-solid congealed loaf of pork scraps and trims, held together with cornmeal and flour, is packed for the breakfast-time delight of many. I always point out that there is no dumpster outside the scrapple plant. EVERYTHING goes into the scrapple!

Backyard chowhounds who love to grill over charcoal have Henry Ford to thank! And not just because their mother-in-law's aged Taurus broke down on the way to the cookout. You see, legendary cheapskate Henry Ford, back in the days of the Model T, saw that his car factories needed a lot of wood to crate parts for shipment. But he couldn't bear to see all that scrap wood go to waste, so he and an employee named Edward Kingsford developed a method to turn it into "charcoal" briquettes, which contain no coal, but have turned a nice profit for the company known as Kingsford over the years.

All this came to mind when I saw the "CBS Sunday Morning" piece about Tater Tots yesterday. That starchy morsel was created in 1953 by Nephi and Golden Grigg, two brothers who owned the Ore-Ida potato company. They needed to a way to avoid wasting all the scraps and skins after they julienned millions of spuds for French fries. So they squeezed and mashed and formed and deep-fried them, and now look at us gobble the Tots!


The difference between us, and people like Kingsford and the Brothers Grigg, is that they look at trash and see dollar signs, whereas we look at trash and remember we were supposed to put out the garbage last night.