It's important not be afraid of new things.

Especially when they taste like duck soup.  Thanks so much to Lucia for sharing her balut with me, and Kellie for giving it a try.

Some people love blood sausage, and some people don't. It's and either or scenario - there's no middle ground. Those enlightened souls who embrace this fantastic sausage will have surely heard of this classic French preparation.

I found these two beauties on sale at my new favorite grocery store - Market Basket.  If there's one near you I suggest going in the morning, during the week.  Or be prepared to throw some elbows in the produce section.

They may not be the prettiest things, but what they lack in looks they make up for in flavor.

Boudin noir aux pommes is as simple a dish as you can imagine.  Gently sear the sausage in some oil, remove from the pan then add some chopped onion, followed by cubed apples and some thyme and a dash of white wine.  Cook until onions and apples begin to soften then place the sausage on top of the apple/onion mixture and cover with a lid.  Cook over low heat until liquid is gone and apples are soft, season to taste with salt and pepper and serve.

As you can see you've got to be careful when cooking blood sausage because the filling can start to bubble out if it's cooked at too high heat.  

If you've never had blood sausage this might be a good preparation to try out.  The sweetness of the apples is a great contrast to the meat of the sausage.  This meal is made butter with a big glass of chilled white wine.

A few months ago I spoke to a culinary class at Newbury College about food blogging with my good buddy Lilly Jan.  One of the pieces of advice I gave them was you must post once a week, barring an extremely important life changing event.  Having said that, please excuse my absence for the past couple months, it was not without reason.

There has been some excitement in the world of Eating Nose to Tail - I will be shooting my first video for How2Heroes in a week.  I'm not sure if I can give away what I'm making or not but a key ingredient is one of my favorite pieces of offal.  I'm very excited.

More immediately exciting is the two different types of black pudding sitting in my fridge.  Black pudding is a sausage made from blood, oats, bread, fat, meat and a variety of flavorings such as onion, garlic, salt and pepper.  My dear friend Tobi has promised to come over and cook a traditional British breakfast (as luck would have it, Tobi is British.)  I was put in charge of finding the black pudding, and I was able to find it at Kiki's Kwik-Mart in Brighton.  If you have a chance go take a look - it's quite a neat little spot.

These particular black puddings seem to be more Irish than English.  Truthfully I don't really know what the difference is, but I'm looking forward to watching Tobi cook them.  I'm hoping he can tell me everything I've ever wanted to know about black pudding.

Sitting just below the remarkable assortment of black pudding was also some really good looking back bacon which also made it home and into my fridge.  I've been talking about trying to make a peameal bacon at home, hopefully this back bacon will inspire me.