little sausage?

As some of you know, I’ve been having some trouble with the name Smudge and I’ve been wondering if it’s really just a milk name, to use until her real name comes to me. Also, “Smudge” just doesn’t come out naturally when I call her and feels more like it will be just one of the many nicknames that’ll come up over the years. But the obvious problem is… what to call her?

photo courtesy of La Morcilla de Burgos

And so I am now trying out the name Morcilla (mor-thee-ya) because, well, she actually looks like a morcilla. And not just any morcilla but a Morcilla de Burgos, the best there is. For those who don’t know, morcilla is the Spanish word for black pudding, or blood sausage, something I grew up hating with a passion. My father was from Newfoundland and had all these weird food habits, one of them being that he loved to do a Sunday morning fry-up that featured black pudding. Bleh. Many years later when I moved to England I discovered that I hated the black pudding there as much as I did when I was a kid in Canada.

But then I moved to Spain and was introduced to the splendid morcilla de Burgos. It’s made with the usual blood and porky bits, but this particular sausage is also filled with rice, onions and spices and the result is both rich and flavourful. And honestly, isn’t her colouring just like a morcilla de Burgos?  What do you think?