Tuesday Fox blogging?

Alas, Platelicker and The Cat have been usurped by wildlife yet again. It’s not that they weren’t engaged in entertaining and photogenic activities over the weekend — wait a sec, is shedding photogenic? Okay, scratch that last part. What I mean to say is, our domestic critters had every intention of sharing their charms with the world (we understand The Cat had something rather nefarious up her Kaga sleeve for Saturday), but a glitch in the matrix a series of unfortunate events resulted in our entire house being thrown back into the dark ages (about 1988 or so) for what felt like days on end.

Shocking but true: we were without the internet for the entire weekend.

I thought I was going to die. For about five minutes, and then I read a book.

And I cleaned the cat box.

And we took the puppy to the beach.

And, without posting, we quietly celebrated Belly Timber’s first anniversary. (More on that later: the end of the world as we know it minor internet snafu has prompted us to postpone our tedious, introspective golly-it’s-been-a-year post anniversary celebration until later this week, when we’ve recovered from the horrors of sitting down and engaging each other in actual conversation.

(We’ll be fine. Really.)

Meanwhile, about that fox.

Attentive readers might note that this fox sighting and last month’s golden eagle sighting both coincided with trips to the beach. In fact, the two sightings occurred not more than about fifty yards from one another, and near this same spot, we’ve seen hawks, bald eagles, even a great horned owl on a misty moonlit night. So, what makes this barren bluff such a hotspot for carnivorous wildlife? This mid-winter shot of the prairie across the road might offer up a clue or two.

Ah, lapin. Délicieux. Too bad the wild ones are so stringy.

I’m one of those picky eaters who never grew out of her childhood hatred of peas. I’m fine with peas in things. Peas in Chinese style fried rice. Peas on lamb vindaloo pizza. Peas in chicken pot pie. But just plain peas? Unless they’re fresh from the garden and inside a pod, forget about it.

Then Chopper made me peas with onions and garlic. And they were almost extremely tasty. Almost. To anyone who loves peas, they’d be ambrosia. For me, maybe just a bit more garlic to completely cover up that pea taste and I’m there. But still, I ate my peas. Which is more than I can say for any moment of my entire childhood.

And the moral of this? Well, it’s my round about way of saying that sometimes life gives you a yucky little bowl of peas and you’ve got to make the best of it by adding garlic and onions.

Like this weekend.

The second weekend in a row wherein we lost our internet connection.

I kid you not.

Last weekend it was all about a billing screw-up.

This weekend? Two hour island-wide power outage, followed by a complete pooching of all of our local ISP’s DSL accounts. Follow that up with multiple attempts to reconnect and a rather unfortunate phone conversation with the Worst Tech Support Person Known to Computerkind (courtesy of our local ISP’s farming out of weekend tech support to one of those call centers halfway across the planet), and we end up with 48 hours’ down time and an ISP administrator who’s scratching her head Monday morning because someone in Bangalor or Beaverton or wherever canceled our repair request and changed our account password without our permission.

So, did I sit at home and eat yucky little bowls of peas all weekend?

Nope. I went all onions and garlic on my (now belated) entry for End of the Month Eggs on Toast and wrote a 2500 word hard boiled tale of passion, puns, and poultry, which I will be posting quite soon. As soon as I scour the pantry for something other than pea soup to eat for supper.

Poach Me Deadly, a noir drama of passion and poultry, was inspired by far too many movies to count, and by Chopper’s delicious Eggs en Plastic recipe, which you’ll find at the end of this tale. Chopper’s recipe was inspired by a passage in Anthony Bourdain’s A Cook’s Tour, wherein Bourdain describes a chef using truffle oil and plastic wrap to poach an egg. For more hard boiled adventures (and more egg puns than you can shake a whisk at), visit this month’s End of Month Eggs on Toast Extravaganza over at Dispensing Happiness. Also, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that some of the most egregious jokes in Poach Me Deadly are entirely Chopper’s fault.

(more…)

This has gone on long enough. First, the internet connection goes out two weekends in a row (right when I’m about to launch my nefarious plot to take over the blog… just you wait… mwrooow…) and then this weekend? It’s a frickin’ holiday weekend, so what does my female captor do? She taunts me with paper. Look at this:

She folds paper up into pretty shapes and I don’t even get to play with it! Where’s my justice, I ask? Where’s my crumply paper?

Ah… there it is.

(more…)

(Head to the end of the post for step-by-step origami box instructions!)

January 2004, six months before the wedding, budget the size of a postage stamp, I had this crazy notion. Why spend money on flowers when they’ll just wilt the next day? We’ll go origami! So, I horded paper, starting with all the leftover post-Christmas sale paper I could get my hands on. (Everything silver, that is; snowflake patterns when folded aren’t that different from random festive swirls, right?) And, under the guidance of our dear friend R.C. (origami expert and karaoke D.J. extraordinaire), I added roses and lilies and decorative boxes to my feeble repertoire of cranes, balloons, and silly hats.

(more…)

Happy Chopper Day!

It’s not his birthday. Our anniversary isn’t for another two months, so there’s really nothing special about this occasion at all, though it is Sugar High Friday and Chopper’s got a new rum poached dessert on the menu at his place of work.

Oh, and this week marks a year since Chopper’s official graduation from culinary school.

And that, in itself is extra special.

(more…)

We’ll rant and we’ll roar like true British sailors,
We’ll range and we’ll roam over all the salt seas,
Until we strike soundings in the Channel of old England:
From Ushant to Scilly ’tis thirty-five leagues.
    — traditional sea shanty, as sung by the crew of the HMS Polychrest

For this post, in honor of St. George’s Day and Sam and Monkey Gland’s inspired food blogging event, What’s For Pud, Belly Timber takes to the high seas.

Or, to be more precise, Belly Timber takes to the English Channel, and to a rather peculiar double-ended boat and its famous captain, Lucky Jack Aubrey.

What’s What’s For Pud, you ask, and what the devil does it have to do with sailors?

Exactly this: What’s For Pud is a celebration of English ‘afters’ — pud, pudding, biscuits, sweets — those sticky sweet, scrumptious dishes that prove wrong all the naysayers who turn their noses up at quintessential English cuisine. And we here at Belly Timber, being rather nautically inclined to begin with, believe that nowhere else can one find dishes more quintessentially English than aboard the great ships of the British Navy during the Golden Age of Sail.

Because, as we know, meals aboard Lord Nelson’s fleet were all about two glorious things: Rum and suet.

Yes, I did indeed say suet.

And nice big bottles o’ rum, by gum.

Which brings us to our splendid St. George’s Day dish: Figgy-dowdy.

(more…)

We’re off to the big city for three days to play with other puppies, so everyone be good to each other while we’re gone and remember: messy cooks spill the best treats, so what ever you do, don’t clean up as you go!

(More Weekend Dog Blogging over at Sweetnicks!)