Anyone eating haggis tonight?

I'm having a Burns themed party on Sunday. Because my housewarming party last year was on Burns night, the one year anniversary will also involve whisky, neeps and tatties (curried) and perhaps poetry. Who knows.

Might not be my first actually, as a nipper in Scotland I was probably weaned on the stuff until we moved away and left a baby with a strange craving for black pudding.

xpost: vegetarians how on EARTH do you have a veggie haggis?! Quorn stomachs?! That's more repulsive than the idea of, of, actually I can't think of anything - oh yes, QUICHE!

(it's great from a chip shop with brown sauce)

*Optional.

p.s. veggie haggis is surprisingly good.

(I might be thinking of hogmanay but whatever..)

We cooked a massive one (had it broiling while we were out and about, but by the time we got back to base, there was only five of us left, and they all went er and ew.

So I took it to a different friends house the next night, and we scoffed most of it on toast. Were we ill? No we were not.

Today: Whole family really love it (including miss picky amber) so will be out .. presumably Sainsbury's will have some.

xpost he's a good dunfermline lad himself! (David Byrne, that is)

Yep. You still have to catch them by putting salt on their tails though.

I think I am a rockist about this - a vegetable mash in a man-made casing aint a haggis! I'm not saying it isn't tasty, or that I wouldn't eat five of them, and in fact a dinner of all the haggises would be the best thing ever - but, you know.

Well I'm starving now so HOPE YOU LOT ARE ALL HAPPY.

xpost: madchen I hope you will be FLINGING.

might get a veggie one this lunchtime. i'll see.

One of my enduring memories is standing on stage at The Burns Club reciting Tam o'Shanter to a smoky room full of ruddy faced old men in kilts.

A few years before I graduated onto the hardcore Burns I performed 'Ally Bally Bee' in front of the same crowd, clutching a tartan adorned black dolly.

my mum is from edinburgh (corstorphine) and when i was a little kid i happened to be good at calligraphy and would write out burns poems as little gifts... awww...

http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-images/Film/Pix/pictures/2006/03/06/crash372.jpg

and then we watched celeb big bro, v. trad

no haggis at tesco ;_;

none in sainsbury's either, so i changed tack and made chicken with courgette and broccoli in a creme fraiche sauce with tomato couscous. it were fuckin' lovely.

the noo.

We had veggie haggis, tatties, and spinach. Yum I love spinach. Then Mister Monkey made a whiskey cocktail, because I don't like whiskey. It had whiskey, lemon juice, kahlua, and triple sec in it. It was really good, but a little sweet.

Glenn Wool - Canadian - very much more my sort of thing.. More a performance. He started out with 2 tester jokes. The one about liking the band Franz Ferdinand but thinking about assassinating them just to see how it got reported.. Only Dawn and I laughed. Conversely, the joke about a-sx brought the house down. So it went that way for a while until most of the audience got more and more uncomfortable (which was the aim..) Excellent stuff..

Adam Bloom - More the classic altcom style, handled heckles as suggestions and worked them in no problem. Also bril.

I used to go see a lot of comedy night such like this, back in the day, but got bored to death when the edgy/different stuff went out, and the 'observational comedy' ruled. OK, so girls use more bogroll, I don't need to talk about it for 15 mins!

"Ally Bally Bee" always makes me cry a little bit, I think it's the tune moe than the words

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/122/369717414_7ec26460d0.jpg?v=0

there was an interesting article on haggis (i can't believe i just typed that) in the metro area in the dining section of the times on weds. as far as burns dinners go, it only mentioned private clubs but there were interviews with several butchers in kearny, nj who make and ship haggis if you want to do your own meal. i suspect that kearny might be the place to go if you really want to find a place that serves it.

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/172/369599451_8816679387.jpg

xpost re: kearny

i really love haggis (i haven't looked for it in here though. it's gotta be around.)

that's what it looks like to me. it was available as a jacket potato topping in glasgow, but i chickened out due to severe hangover.

it still is. it's all a friend of mine ate for a week once because safeway had their own brand on sale for 99p. he was in our office a lot at the time, and you do not even want to know about the digestive fallout.

There's yr problem, in a nutshell. Romanticised views of "the old country" abound, perhaps best summed up by the woman who runs a winery Ned drank a bottle from at a recent meal. She describes her heritage as coming from "the glen village of Falkirk". Yes, Falkirk. The Falkirk that Arab Strap come from.

When I was growing up we had haggis maybe once a fortnight, basically because it was cheap.

hahahhahahahahah FUCKING HELL.

you sure she didn't say "the glum spillage of falkirk" or something?

growing up in blackpool, the child of highlanders, i ate haggis at least once a week. marks and spencer sold the stuff, for fuck's sake. i never knew there was anything particularly romantic/burnsian/whatever about it until i was 14; it was just a nice dinner we had. better than chicken kievs; not quite as good as mum's fried fish.

bought my haggis for Monday.

I won't be eating any but I will in fact be in the same room as a haggis tonight.

Monday! Thanks for the reminder, always forget this.

no haggis to be found in the immediate vicinity, cockaleekie perhaps...

dudes what the hell is in vegetarian haggis and is that really haggis?

Djing a Burns' Night thing. Supposed to be a mix of trad and modern pop. No idea how I'm gonna manage it. Still, free haggis for me.

By which I mean: Help! I don't think I can mix the Alexander Brothers into Glasvegas into Jimmy Shand into Goodbye Mr Mackenzie...

a block of trad and then a crowd pleaser of modern pop and that will keep the dancefloor full of the easily scared and then into DJ's choice. Do the opposite to go back and maybe see if there are any Modern pop songs that you can dashing white seargeant to.

lol at Goodbye Mr Mackenzie though.....

I'll be okay if I never do the Gay Gordon's again, I think.

blast this bad jam

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ojpy8yYTU6w

i love laurel in a kilt itt.

I've never eaten it, I have one in the fridge and intend to try it over the weekend. Should've had it on Tuesday really, but didn't realise it was Burns Night till after I'd eaten. Should I bake my haggis or boil it?

Boil.

Wrap in foil and put in a dish of water in the oven.

So it's completely immersed?

I had a bag of haggis flavored chips the other day but I think it was just 'pork flavoring' according to the bag

Not completely immersed, no.

Just a couple of inches of water in the bottom of the dish. 45 minutes per pound. I tried doing it in a steamer last time and it didn't work as well. I think boiling it would run the risk of it going too watery.

The haggis was nice enough, but not my favourite thing ever. It reminded me most of a more offally black pudding. I think I overcooked it a bit though, and it was only a three quid one from Sainsburys.

haggis shouldn't = black pudding. should be spicier, meatier, moister.

http://i.imgur.com/1I5hQkj.png

now i'm hungry

me sorted for thursday

https://i.imgur.com/0SGI1Dz.png

sorry. no haggis. the nearest approach I could make would be a bowl of oatmeal.

BELCH! BURP!