Burns Night Haggis Redux

This week, when my sister visited for her birthday, I ended up having haggis (both standard and vegetarian) three nights in a row.

The reason being that my stepfather threw a really rather excellent Burns Night supper for 16 neighbours, and there was an awful lot of haggis kicking around, haggises that just a few days before had been freely roaming the grousey highlands until being cruelly shot for our culinary pleasure.

We had no piper, but an iPad was able to play Burns' "Address to a Haggis" in all its incomprehensible glory to the guests, who then toasted the haggis and my mother with whisky shots I had poured.

I had one and then got a stinking headache straightaway, reminding me why I never drink the stuff.

My sister and I had two more Burns Night suppers of our own when she arrived the next day.

We love our haggis.

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 31.01.20

Happy Hedgehog Has Heavenly Haggis

We celebrated Burn's Night yesterday. I got to celebrate it again today too, in leftover fashion.

Haggis is offal marmite, I suppose. People will happily eat liver and kidney, yet choke back vomit on the thought of eating haggis, as if heart and lungs are involved in the production of more unpleasant substances of those aforementioned organs.

I'm the other way round, I will eat haggis but no other organ things. It's the Scottish blood.

Mum insists we celebrate each year, and woe betide me if I turn up in my work gear. Burns is to be respected, even if it was the wrong night. We can't pipe in the Haggis, but I did pretend, and mum has to recite the Selkirk Grace that Burns himself did at a dinner on St Mary's Isle Kirkcudbright. Our home town.

Some hae meat and canna eat
And some wad eat that want it;
But we hae meat, and we can eat,
Sae let the Lord be thankit.


It usually takes her three goes to get all the way through, but she makes it. Luckily it's the Selkirk Grace, and not the rude version of "Coming Through the Rye" that is associated with Burn's night. Burns wrote that one with his diamond ring on the window of a pub in Dumfries, up the road.

Of our two guests, only one was a haggis virgin. He was happy with the whisky, but you could tell he was only pretending to enjoy the mighty haggis, "Chieftain o' thae Puddin Race". His chewing was far too slow.

Our guest was a wuss.

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 24.01.16