Pudding

All blog sites hate me today. Is it the wind up of Nov blogging keeping sites from loading?
I just wanted to upload a picture and call it done, but now you get to hear (see) me winge instead.

Ok, maybe I won't whinge. Maybe I'll share.
I made proper Yorkshire pudding for dinner tonight. When I was younger and devouring any books set in the UK, I would salivate when "tea" was mentioned. Ahhh, crumpets, cakes and puddings. Visions of lovely sweets adorning dainty china plates. I guess I was envisioning petit fours and layer cakes... wow, now I'm hungry.

Anyway, that is NOT the case.

The first thing I tried to pick up in the store that resembled the pudding I'm used to (picture Bill Cosby saying "yum"), was actually pretty nasty. Pudding here is a bread, in every form you can imagine. There's Christmas pudding, which is a lot like our fruit cake, but add every kind of alcohol and let it cure for a year or so. There's Spotted Dick (I joke you not), that even though I didn't care for the taste, I have bought it for every American that has come to visit. But I regress, the subject of today's post is Yorkshire pudding (wait 'till I bend your ear (eye?) about clotted cream...).
I had some (pudding--my, you get lost easily) in a restaurant. It was a little bread-ish bowl with steaming roast beef and loads of dark, rich gravy. I decided this was one thing I needed to learn how to make. So, I got out my handy British cookbook and there was a recipe! But it was only for the bread part, that's no good. So I asked a friend, "Do you make Yorkshire pudding?" "Oh, no!" she replied like I was daft, "I buy them at Tesco's and pop them in the oven."
Well, I'm liking this more all of the time.
She told me the brand she uses (Aunt Bessie's) and off I went. Well, Tesco's carries LOTS of brands of Yorkshire pudding, but they have no meat, no gravy, nada. What the heck?
So I ask another friend (I can't look too stupid to the same person), "What is yorkshire pudding?"
I discover it's the batter/bread thing (like an American pop-over I'm told), you add what you want to it.
So tonight, I popped in the Aunt Bessie's and topped it with my own beef and gravy. Delicious. I LOVE this country!