No, we’re not done with the pig’s blood just yet.

In fact, I’ve a feeling there could be 38 different dishes you can cook with Black Pudding. Thirty-eight at the very least.

Not that I plan on naming them all here.

In fact, I’ll just mention two or three.

First off: Chopper’s Lancashire Hotpot. He made this one on the Saturday after the black pudding was done and served it to unsuspecting guests. The guests were quite pleased and went back to the kitchen for seconds.

That Sunday morning, Chopper made a scramble with spinach, onion, more bits of black pudding, and the last remaining smidge of Lancashire Hotpot. It too was quite tasty, though it could have used something sweet to temper the spinach/onion/pig’s blood nexus.

Enter, apples. Inspired by denzylle’s comment on our Happy Entrails to You post, Chopper created a frittata wherein the black pudding mixed it up with tasty, crunchy bits of Granny Smith apple and the whole thing was topped with grated kasseri.

We declared it tasty and wolfed it down, thus ending Black Pudding Days at casa Belly Timber after only three dishes.

Only three? Surely there must be more!

Now, I’d offer up a challenge to see who can come up with the largest number of black pudding variations, but to be perfectly honest, after writing this post up I think I’m quite ready to move on from pig’s blood for at least a short while. So instead, because we’re never completely done with All Things British in these parts, and because we believe in extending all birthday celebrations at least a week and a half, your challenge (with a hat tip to Riba Rambles for the meme) is this:

Grab a pencil and paper and without looking at any resources, see if you can list all 38 (most commonly agreed upon) Shakespeare plays. And don’t give me any of that silly Francis Bacon really wrote them twaddle.

Mmm…. bacon.
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(If my dad’s spirit is the heart of this blog, then Audrey, aka Angry Cat, aka Kitty Kaga, is Belly Timber’s snarky soul. Audrey died in December, following a brief but brutal illness, but it seems that even death hasn’t kept her completely quiet. Take this crazy rant that showed up on my screen this morning… –MizD)

Oh, you wee evil humans. Listen up.

A curious thing happened these past few months. Not long after I made my rather abrupt journey to the Happy Hunting Ground, my humans ran into a bit of misfortune. Not that my untimely demise wasn’t unfortunate. Hellish is more like it. I wasn’t even around to reap the benefits of that silly thieving newspaper’s forking out for my photo. What are they going to do? Ship catnip to the afterlife? Right.

(By the way, I have things to say to humans about the number of new arrivals around these parts. Things unfit for a family blog. And yes, my humans will never know for certain, but it is entirely possible that I too was a victim of this abomination. My food was on the list.)

So, here I am, off in the beyond (where there are plenty of fat, juicy mice with no toxic additives, thanks much), and what do I see? My humans aren’t posting! NO! This is my legacy, you freaky, pink-skinned good-for-nothing…puppies! Mrrooooar.

I’ve half a mind to go down there and haunt their dreams.

See, it seems they experienced what humans like to call “hard times.” The one called Chopper, he ran out of work and couldn’t get this thing called “unemployment” because he hadn’t been back in the state long enough, and the Miz D one? Well, she tried to do this thing called “freelancing” and the people who were supposed to hire her flaked off like so much icky, half-dried pouch food.

Miz D, she even came up with a name for what she didn’t want to do: BWB. Blogging While Broke. Sucks, she says. Can’t write about tasty foods, can’t write about cool trips, can’t even start that personal chef thing they want to do ’cause there’s no start-up funds, got to spend spare time searching couch cushions for quarters, mrow, mrow, mrow, you get the picture.

Of course I’m thinking: If I were there, I’D be posting. Just POST already, bipeds.

But noooo. They take a hiatus. Don’t even let the furball post. Not that the furball would have much to say aside from: Hey! House to self! No kitty! Wheee!

Huh. I wonder if she misses me.

What’s that? You want to know how I got here? Ahah. See, I’ve found a very nice medium with a keyboard. Madame Kittikatsky, she calls herself, and she’s managed to sneak access to the Belly Timber Angry Cat Blog account.

(She tells me she has a cunning plan for future postings – a plan may involve the appearance of a new kitten. Mroow. Clever medium. I think I’ll keep her.)

So, here I am with a message from the beyond: Oh humans, my humans? Don’t make me come down there and smack some sense into you. If I can BWD, then you can BWB. Besides, I know things are looking better for you. I can smell it. Fried kippers? Steamed mussels? SALMON?

Excuse me. I’m hungry. I have a mouse to catch.

(And now, for your viewing pleasure, My final photo shoot: Angry Cat + Back Scratcher = Happy Cat.)

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I think it’s about time we made some chicken stock.

(This brief post brought to you by MizD’s freezer, over-stuffed with bones.)

If Angry Cat were around today, she’d be livid. I mean tearing the paint from the walls livid. See, we don’t know for certain, but Angry Cat may have died from tainted food. And now, in the wake of that – in the wake of the Menu Foods disaster – the USDA, in their infinite wisdom, is considering a rule change that’ll further dilute the meaning of the word "organic."

That’s right, under the new rule, all those big Agri-businesses we already trust so, so much? They can call beer "organic" even if it’s made with pesticide-treated hops.

They can call food items "organic" even if they contain synthetic food colorings, fish oil from farm-raised, mercury-tainted fish, sausage casings from factory-farmed animals, and (among other things) inorganic whey protein concentrate.

Huh. Protein concentrates from crappy overseas factories. Just what we want in our "organic" foods after we’ve been so careful about finding new resources for our surviving pets.

Yeah, Angry Cat would be pissed.

But since she’s not here at the moment, I’m going to send you over to this most excellent diary on Daily Kos, and to the Regulations.gov page where you can leave a comment and tell the USDA just how you feel. (The Daily Kos diary includes detailed instructions for maneuvering through the rather unfriendly comment form. I highly recommend that you write up your comment first and then copy-and-paste to the site; the form has a bad habit of timing out.)

And by the way, because, as we all know, the USDA is indeed infinitely wise about such things and infinitely willing to listen to the average consumer, they’ve given us a teensy window of time for comments. In fact, that time runs out at the end of day TODAY. (Believe me, if I’d known about this a week ago…)

No doubt Agri-businesses had months of lobbying time. Us? We got a week. Thanks, USDA! Love you too. Here, have a burger and some fries. No clue where the ingredients came from, but you told me they were organic.

(In which we welcome back the Belly Timber tradition of bringing a little Whine into your Wednesday…)

MizD: Look! Just look what they did!

Chopper: (with a heavy sigh) I know. I know.

MizD: But — But —

Chopper: You need to get it out of your system.

MizD: All of it?

Chopper: Yes. All of it.

MizD: At once? Like, maybe in a blog post?

Chopper: If it works for you, baby, then yes. In a blog post.

MizD: Hah! At last! I have a reason to bring back Whine Blogging Wednesday!

This week’s episode: House: F.U.B.A.R.
(or, what part of “no substantial changes” did the tenants not understand?)

Once upon a time, we had a cute little Victorian bungalow and it was well on its way toward restoration as a perfect and cozy sanctuary away from the grind of the workaday world. Oh, all right, maybe half on its way if I’m going to be perfectly honest about it. It still had its share of problems. Damaged floor in the bathroom, cracked window in the living room, kitchen in dire need of a makeover. But all in all, it wasn’t too shabby of a little house for being almost a hundred years old, and we’d put many long hours into chipping away at our Big List of House Projects.

Some of our improvements were small: A new ceiling fan for the kitchen, a new light fixture in the bathroom. And some – three in particular – were quite the challenge. Those three: The bathroom, the studio, and the yard.

One: The Bathroom.

Our bathroom is tiny. Seriously tiny. It is, as they say, a one-ass bathroom. We’ve yet to tackle the ugly shower walls, or the sink counter, or the floor, but we did take on the rather ominous job of painting the walls. Eh, it’s a small room. No big deal, right? One gallon of paint and it’s done? Hah. This place has nooks and crannies that would scare the crap out of a cockroach. It’s not just a major pain in the ass to paint, it’s a major pain in the ass just to reach around the toilet tank to clean.

(Yeah, ick.)

So, when we took on the task of scrubbing it down and prepping the walls for painting, we knew we’d have to pick a good quality paint and a nice rich color that wouldn’t show off every steam-laminated dog hair that clings to its surface. Seriously. Dog hair. It migrates to the bathroom like swallows to Capistrano, only by the hour, not by the year. Trust me. I’d need to be Joan Crawford on speed to keep up with that cleaning project.

We went for a coffee color and found faux antique bronze fixtures to match. The eventual plan was to redo the shower in tile of various shades of cream, brown, and black. Ditto the floor. Very cappuccino. Very au lait. (Or au soy lait, to appease my crabby digestion.)

We made it as far as the paint job and the cabinet hardware before we had to move north. Of course, that didn’t stop us from further planning: Let’s do something with slate so it’s all dark and rustic. Let’s get a clawfoot tub!

And then we came home…

…and discovered the tenants had repainted the bathroom pale blue with crappy paint and not much of an eye for staying between the lines. (I bet they suck at coloring books, too.) The hardware’s mostly still there, though blue-tipped in places, but there’s a curious absence where the sliding door to the toiletry cabinet once was.

Oh, and the dog hairs? So, so visible.

But you know what? This is nothing. This is, comparatively speaking, a weensy whine; a warm-up before part two and then the grand finale. Renters, they repaint all the time. It’s when they tear things apart and muck with the landscape that things really get interesting.

MizD: There. I whined about the bathroom.

Chopper: All out of your system yet?

MizD: Not exactly. I’ve still got the studio and the yard, and then there’s all those little things… windows painted shut, mildew from the houseplants… I could go on and on.

Chopper: But it’s Whine Blogging Wednesday, not Whine Blogging Week.

MizD: Hey. WBW. Same initials. Who’s going to notice?

Chopper: (another heavy sigh) You will have this out of your system when you’re done, right?

MizD: (fingers crossed behind her back) Of course, pookie. Why would you ever doubt me? Blogging is cathartic. I’ll be just peachy dandy about the condition of the house next week.

Chopper: You will?

MizD: Absolutely! Especially if you clear all these boxes of kitchen crap out of the living room!

Chopper: Oh, yeah, that.