Last night I accompanied Cufflinks to a Burns Supper at his friend Amity's house. This is one of those times when it pays to have my always-say-yes policy: months ago, Cufflinks invited me, Sam, and Krista to the Spoon to listen to music and only I said yes. Saying yes to one interesting thing leads inevitably to doing something interesting, and as often as not leads to more interesting things later on down the line. Saying no to interesting things leads to writing the world's most boring memoir. But I digress.
I will try anything once, food-wise, and when I Wikipedia'd haggis my first question was not "Why on earth would anyone eat such a thing?" but "Where in Bloomington can you buy a sheep stomach and when can I go there?" It turns out that you actually can't, which is kind of disappointing in a way, but the unavailability of the correct offal actually made Amity's haggis WAY more delicious than actual haggis probably is. Hers was like muttony meatloaf, and though I don't like meatloaf especially I do like mutton. It was served, as is traditional, with tatties and neeps, as well as a really good soup, kale, and stewed apples.
(Cufflinks, of course, didn't eat anything but the potatoes. He is the world's pickiest eater and I find it profoundly annoying. He won't eat any fruits or vegetables, ever. A boy who won't eat an apple clearly has something wrong with him. Probably scurvy.)
We did the whole shebang - toasting the haggis and Robert Burns with various scotches (some were peaty, some were smoky, all were very liquory and disgusting. Mixing them with Scotch water, a grainy potion of water, sugar, and oatmeal, did not help at all). Cufflinks did the toast to the lasses (it's supposed to be "amusing but not offensive" and I urged him to bawdy it up but he didn't, really) and most of the poems because he was able to do the accent. And there was dancing - someone tried to show me how to waltz but I was hopeless and he gave up on me, laughing - and the shortbread I'd made using Laurie Colwin's recipe was a big hit. After supper the men lit up honest-to-God pipes, so the room had a not-unappealing old-mannish smell.
All in all it was a most satisfactory adventure, which is what happens when you say yes.
5 comments:
Sounds like a great time! Were there pipes? Who gave the speech to teh laddies?
I've always wanted to go to a Burns Dinner-- it sounds like gouty good fun.
how come nobody has ever taught my family members to dance properly? Da can't polanaise and you can't waltz?! how come you can't waltz? it's the easiest freaking dance in the world- today, I taught seven-year-olds how to do it.
You're in for a dance lesson or two when you get home to Big Pink, missy.
But was it a Brau Brich moonlicht nicht?
Who cares? what a fun thing to do! And learning to waltz should become a priority. I'll pay to see you do it with The Lil...and/or your Pa.
Actually, the more I think about it, the more this sort of event sounds like something where everyone in our family could specialize. You can eat the mutton, and I can drink the scotch. CLA can play Rugby, your mother can listen to bagpipes, and LCA can dance.
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