Naw, Rue, go ahead and tell the Canadians you’re from Canadia. They’ll never figure it out.
Just wear flannel and tell them you’re from a different province (different from the one you’re in, I mean).
Cultivate the appropriate accent. For instance, if you are pretending to be from New Brunswick, just add an “eh?” to the end of every other sentence while otherwise trying to sound as if you’re from Maine.
It’s easy, and fun for the whole family.
Swampy’s all better now. Really I am. I haven’t had even one thought about you know what in a good 5-7 minutes now.
Rue no for real Scottish shortbread? That’s just awful! Come on down to south Jawja and I’ll make ya a batch.
Shibb if southwestern Ohio is really full of those you know whats (still not thinking about you know what) I might just have to make a visit.
I really am all better…[sub]big burly sweaty guys…beer…cookies…big burly sweaty guys[/sub] STOP THAT BRAIN! now. Really…[sub]bigburlysweatyguys[/sub]
Well, [sub]bigburlysweatyguysbeercookiesbigburlysweatyguys[/sub] maybe not all better yet [sub]bigburlysweatyguys[/sub]
I don’t know whose hamburgers you have experience with, but my hamburgers are made of lean ground beef. I think you meant to say “hot dogs”, which are, indeed, made of leftovers from the meat packing plant. In a haggis, the chef knows exactly what ingredients are included. In a hotdog, it’s anyone’s guess - whatever’s left once the “useful” meat’s been processed, and it varies depending on what’s available. Scary stuff.
Hey, I never knew Greedo was Welsh!
“Yook ee dah, Solo?”
[Warden in “Cool Hand Luke”]
What we got here is a failure to communicate.
[/Warden in “Cool Hand Luke”]
See, what happened was, when I was just a little kid (nine or ten years old) I ended up feeling really, really dumb because it took me about an hour to figure out what a “spanner” was.
I hear talk of people eating “bloaters” for breakfast, and I don’t know what that is. I can’t figure out what a “milk float” is. You’d think it would be a type of beverage. You would be wrong, though, because apparently it’s a vehicle of some sort (delivery van?).
I still don’t get why “egg creams” don’t have any eggs in them.
The upshot is, we’uns is jest havin’ fun in this here thread, and didn’t actually wanna have a big discussion.
And trying to recruit some big burly guys for swampbear.
Now you know why Lucas decided he had to shoot first in the Special Edition.
[sub]And at the risk of being pedantic, the ‘c’ in “ywc” has a ch sound like in the Scottish loch.[/sub]
At least we have a cool flag.
Now you know why Lucas decided he had to shoot first in the Special Edition.
[sub]And at the risk of being pedantic, the ‘c’ in “ywc” has a ch sound like in the Scottish loch.[/sub]
At least we have a cool flag. Of course, I’m Canadian now, so I fly a Canadian flag. You know, the one with the beaver on it.
Hey, I take my Scottish heritage seriously. My mom was born and raised in Scotland until she was sixteen years old, when she and her parents emigrated here. We always went to the Highland Games anywhere they had them that was within driving distance.
So anyway, one day at one of these ScotsFests, I saw the posters for the annual “Robbie Burns’s Dinner” and asked my mom why we never went to THAT? She said “Because we don’t drink.” Which made no sense to me at all, until someone (me gram) finally told me that you have to eat Haggis at the Robbie Burns’s Dinner, and…well, Haggis is a dish best served after MUCH whiskey. Which we don’t drink. Well, what she actually said is that Haggis is a dish best never served at all, she said that how a dish that was originally created because everyone was so poor that they HAD to use every vile little bit of protein that the sheep provided (these are HER words, not mine, don’t hit ME!!!) became infamous as the national dish of Scotland was beyond her, and if there was anything she was happy to leave behind when she left home it was Haggis. And peat fires, whatever they are. I think she was very disturbed after she settled here the first time she saw a flier for the Robbie Burns’s Dinner and found that Haggis, far from being a distant and unpleasant memory, was alive (well, sort of) and well in Bellingham, WA. Whoda’ thunk?
She seemed happy about the lack of peat fires, though, whatever they are.
And then my mom went and married my dad, who is Finnish and eats Lutefisk. And people wonder why I am a bit eccentric. I actually think I was doomed from conception. 
Anyway, for your viewing pleasure, here is a recipe that sounds as close to gram’s recipe as I could find. Oh, yes, she DID have the recipe…but I never once in all the years I knew her ever saw her make it. Don’t read this on a full stomache. And enjoy the whiskey!
Traditional Haggis
1 stomach bag
Liver, lights and heart of a sheep
1 breakfast cup oatmeal
2 onions
8 oz shredded mutton suet
salt and black pepper
Clean stomach bag thoroughly and leave overnight in cold water to which salt has been added. Turn rough side out. Put heart, lights and liver in a pan. Bring to boil and simmer for 1-1/2 hours. Toast the oatmeal on a tray in the oven or under grill. Chop the heart, lights and liver. Mix all the ingredients together with suet, adding salt and pepper. Keep mixture sappy, using liquid in which liver was boiled. Fill bag a little over half full as mixture needs room to swell. Sew securely and put in a large pot of hot water. As soon as mixture begins to swell, prick with a needle to prevent bag from bursting. Boil for 3 hours.
Serve with mashed potatoes and mashed turnip. Serves 6-8.
Don’t read the recipe above: haggis tastes really really nice.
Try just to think “it’s meat” and you’ll get it down your throat (BTW, you don’t eat the stomach - that’s just the packaging). It’s probably no worse than what goes into frankfurters or other sausages. Truly a delicious dish, especially when washed down with a nice single malt.
BTW I can’t imagine why your gran didn’t like 'em - they’re well romantic, and have a wonderful smell.
Surely, it was "Yook ee dah, Boyo!
Err… I meant “peat fires” here - I didn’t mean that haggises are romantic. They’re not. :smack:
Heh, lookie there! I’m a standard by which other posts are judged. Keep the Rue Standard! Without it we’re doomed to economic ruin!
Swampy, (maybe if you keep some ice cubes in your hat, that might help your… condition) it wasreal Scottish shortbread, and it was real good. If a little crumbley. It’s just that Puddin’ was all touchy about how there was a lot of Scottish stuff in the post and not a whole lot of English stuff, so I was just being sensitive. I can do that you know, be sensitive to others.
(And I just saw in today’s paper Burger King is owned by a London (that would be the one in England) based company. The same one that owns Guinness. So currently Burger King is NOT American. But a Texas company is looking to buy it. So it will be soon. (Like the English version of Burger King is SOOOOO much different than, say, that one all-American company that I forget the name of that pretends to be Scottish. Mac-something.))
Josie (that would be Scotti, if you didn’t know, but she does and that’s what’s important), the recipe you gave is a lot like that local sausage thing with oatmeal I’ve talked about before, goetta. Only goetta is German-ish and pig-based, where the noble sheep gives it’s all (plus it’s “lights” whatever they are, and, no, I don’t want to know what a sheep’s “lights” are) for haggis.
I guess there would be an analog for haggis or goetta for any animal. (The last bits of _________ plus some grain and stuff to hold it together and bulk it out.) But like “sheep’s lights” I don’t really want to go into it.
-Rue. (the Standard)
Just for the record, Rue, you are my standard of behavior and comportment. No matter when I go or what I do, I pause and ask myself “If Rue was here, how would he handle this situation?”
No, really - I do. I’m even going to cut my hair like yours. And adopt two little boys. And get a new furnace and air conditioner. Yes, it’s true, Rue, every aspect of my life revolves around achieving one-ness with you, on a purely spiritual level, of course. The one-ness I seek is beyond the constraints of the mere physical world. The Rue Standard defines me and compels me to better myself and my surroundings.
Seriously.
Step right up!
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Now you can let the entire world know that when you’re faced with a dilemma, you ask, “What Would Rue Do?”
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And the money goes to charity. Yep, that’s right! Charity!
All proceeds from the sale of “WWRD” items benefit the Zappo Fund for the Care and Maintenence of Wayward Women.
Thank you, Jjimm, for trying to help talk sense to these haggis-fearing ninnies. Scotticher, go to a Burns Night dinner some time - the food is usually excellent, and the haggis is just one course of the meal, usually. You’ll get the opportunity to try it for yourself instead of relying on someone else’s opinion. (After all, I hate enchiladas, but I know that many people out there think they’re delicious. If you just took my word for it, you’d never even try one of the nasty little things, or most other Mexican food, for that matter.)
Oh, and the Burns Night dinner we went to this year had a cash bar, but in order to get decent whisky we had to go to the hotel’s bar down the hallway. The bartender saw us coming in our kilts and asked which Scotch we wanted before we even opened our mouths…so drinking at Burns Night is definitely not mandatory.
Ok I have to know. What are sheep’s (sheeps’?)
lights? At least reassure me it’s not eyeballs or something like that.
:eek:
According to my dictionary, lights are the lungs of a slaughtered animal.
The haggis I ate when I was staying at a bed-and-breakfast in Scotland was grey. I don’t remember it as having been particularly tasty, either. On the other hand, it didn’t taste bad. It didn’t have much taste at all.
Of course, its blandness may have had something to do with the fact that it was prepared with the idea of serving it to American tourists.
jjimm, I think that gram’s aversion to peat fires had something to do with the fact that she was one of thirteen children, they were dirt poor and used peat fires to heat the “house” (I put that in quotes because gram always managed to do that verbally…don’t ask me how, she just “did.”) From what I gather, peat is not easy to light, near impossible to KEEP lit, and tends to be REALLY smoky. And I think it was gram’s job to tend the fire, keep the “house” warm with it and attempt to keep it from smoking up the joint. Possibly she associated the peat fire with grim poverty or something. I couldn’t really ever get her to talk about her childhood, other than occasional comments which she then declined to elaborate on. Except for happy memories, which she shared often and in great detail.
I am so happy to hear that “lights” refers to sheep lungs…I asked, but gram always said “best not to know.” (BTW, I should love to be quoting her with an approximation of her brogue, which was delightful…but I have tried, and I jus’ canna’ do 'un. ye ken?)
ANYWAY, I first heard this phrase as a very young child, and I thought…well, you probably KNOW what I thought. It gave me nightmares for weeks. To think I was seeing sightless sheep wandering lost among the heather when what I SHOULD have been losing sleep over was sweet woolly stomach-less and liver-less and lung-less sheep gamboling happily around…hey, WAIT A SECOND!!!
Gram was a tough little cutie, and a great gram. But that is another story for another thread.
So I promise to hit the next Robbie Burns’s Dinner I can. And I know it is really ROBERT BURNS NIGHT DINNER, but in my family it was called ROBBIE Burns’s Dinner, and who am I to break with tradition? Maybe someone in my family knew him well enough to call him Robbie. Or maybe they just weren’t paying attention. Who knows?
O, I can understand your gram’s aversion.
Mr Burns is traditionally known as Rabbie Burns, not Robbie. I think this is an appropriate juncture to give Mr. Burns’s address to a haggis: