Had my Burns Dinner last night. Made far too much food--neeps, taties, mushroom, salmon, scotch eggs and vegetarian haggis, with bannocks and shortbread with apples and cheese for dessert. We used John's poem for the Immortal Memory, "Nine Inch Will Please a Lady" for the address to the ladies, the almanac entry for extra comedy, and then nearly killed ourselves by inventing "The Robert Burns Drinking Game" for a round robin reading of "Tam O'Shanter."

The simple rules of the drinking game: Whenever Burns mentions drinking, drunkenness, thirst or an actual drink, you must take a drink.

We also had a possible first for a Burn's dinner--everyone asking for seconds of the Haggis. It was made of steel cut oats, rolled oats, crushed hazelnuts, carrots, onions, mushrooms and dried wild mushrooms (Pine Spikes to be specific, a California sub-variety that are deep burgundy colored) reconstituted with being soaked in scotch, seasoned with rosemary, parsley, and "spike seasoning" blend, the whole thing toasted in butter then wrapped in banana leaves and steamed.

The Pine Spikes did indeed look like bits of minced lamb lung, but tasted delicious. The general consensus was that we had created an A1 stuffing for goose or duck.

Lee, who'd attended Burns suppers before, piped in the Haggis, and later sang us a parody of "John Barleycorn" called "Non-Barleycorn."

The song can be heard here:

http://www.oakashthorn.com/cgi-bin/Audio.cgi

Thanks again, John, for introducing me to the idea of a Burns Supper. It was great fun.

I'm going to try making my leftover neeps and tatties into an "Orkney Clashpot" by baking them together with some of the cheeses we had.