Sunday, January 27, 2008

"we’ll take a cup o’ kindness yet, for auld lang syne!"

What did you guys do on Friday night? Me, I made my grad school friends celebrate an old Scottish custom with me. ;)

Burns Night is a celebration of the Scottish poet Robert Burns. Scots and ex-pats host "Burns Suppers" during the week of January 25th to honor & remember the "Bard of Scotland." It's a fun holiday and one that I've always wanted to observe. So, this year, I remembered in time & invited friends to the Coat of Arms, a British pub in Portsmouth.
My GSBB & I started off with a supper of haggis (vegetarian was all the shop had, which completely defeats the purpose, but beggars can't be choosers), carrot & parsnip mash, and potatoes w/ bacon & cheese. The traditional Burns Supper is haggis, neeps (turnips), and tatties (potatoes), so we did a pretty decent imitation. Above is us enjoying our meal, and yes, that's the can for the veggie haggis balanced on my beer bottle. ;)

Then, we picked up some friends w/o cars from campus & brought them to my house for a dessert of cranachan. You might remember this as the traditional dessert that I made for Thanksgiving this year after enjoying on Skye in March.

Me enjoying my cranachan w/ raspberries

Some of the girls at the Coat

Cameron's popular w/ the ladies

See what I mean? ;)

Me & the GSBB's older brother

Once we hit the pub, I tried to keep up the Scottish theme. I brought a postcard shaped like a haggis, a book of Scottish folk songs, some Celtic temporary tattoos, a version of Peter Rabbit translated into Scots (which people got a huge kick out of), and some whisky-flavored condoms that were a present from my Scottish friend David years ago. I also shared a poem I wrote awhile ago about Edinburgh. Enjoy! ;)

Like maself, ye ken the Athens o' the north,
where green are the Meadows and blue is the Forth.
The lads are all braw there, or so I've been told.
Although when the wind blows, their wee men get cold.

2 comments:

Paul said...

Veggie haggis? Can it be haggis without lamb innards?

Krista said...

hahahaaaaaaaaa, the first time I met my husbands mother was for a dinner in celebration of Mr. Burns. My Husband (clan Sinclair in the hizous) had never tried haggis, being that I was trying to impress his Mother I took up a WHOLE mouthful and went MMMMM!! taste like my mothers meat stuffing (totally full of crap all I could taste was the liver)! So this made Matt decided he would grow some and give it a try and promptly spit it in his napkin.

I drank a lot of Scotch that night to rid the taste.