But We Hae Meat, and We Can Eat!

As most of you probably know by now, I have strong ties to Scotland.  The city I grew up in, Dunedin, Florida, was founded by relocated Scots, and our bands in middle and high school marched with bagpipers and played Scottish music.  One of the coolest things in moving from middle to high school was getting to actually wear a kilt while performing in the band, and every four years, the band would take a trip to visit Scotland, staying in our sister city of Stirling, aka "The Gateway to the Highlands."  I grew up around highland games and in every city I've lived in so far, I've sought them out.  Thankfully, Chris likes bagpipes as well, so he's always been happy to accompany me on these journeys to seek out my fellow Highlanders.

One of the highland games in this area every year is on the Queen Mary, right in Long Beach Harbor, 15 minutes from our house.  Perfect!  Although we couldn't attend the games themselves this year, due to an impromptu weekend trip (in actuality, it lasted for 24 hours) back to Phoenix to see friends, we were able to attend our first Burns Night dinner, last Friday evening.  For those of you who don't know what a Burns dinner is, don't fret - I wasn't 100% clear on what is was either - it's mainly a celebration of Robert Burns, Scotland's national poet, with food, readings, and all other things Scottish.

The man himself.

Rugged, ay?

Most Burns dinners are in January, when his birthday actually occurred, but since the games here are in mid February, that was called close enough.  We got gussied up in our Scottish best (including the tie we purchased for Chris the weekend of the Surf City half marathon) and headed out into the torrential rain toward the harbor (truly, torrential doesn't even begin to cover it.  Our neighbor lost the use of his pickup truck when his tree came down on it in the street that afternoon, and Long Beach Police officers spent the morning canvassing the homeless folks who live in the normally dry canals to warn them of potential flooding.  It was pretty epic, ya'll).  We made it to the dinner without issue, but the room ended up only being about halfway full, as other, more faint-hearted folks didn't try the trek.

A bonnie lass and laddie!

So the picture above is obviously the better one of us (even with the green light from Daisy's dock drowning out my side...), but I wanted to include the one below, too, as it shows off a bit of where we were gathering for the dinner.  

We were in the tea room of the Queen Mary, and it was pretty darn lovely - all art deco and 30s (I guess my Daisy Buchanan reference above wasn't that out of left field...) - with gorgeous wood and marble inlays and the whole nine yards.  Some other shots around the room:

One of the light sconces in the room.

As you can see from the folks behind it,

it's pretty huge.

The marble mantle piece above the fireplace.

It's easily 20 feet tall.

The hosts waited to start the dinner a bit later than the designated time to see if any stragglers would show up, but eventually, they kicked things off with the welcome and the presentation of the haggis.  See, Burns wrote tons of stuff that you don't even know you know - "My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose," "Auld Lang Syne," and "Tam O'Shanter" amongst them - he also wrote the "Address to a Haggis."  Thus, it's always a major part of any self-respecting Burns dinner.

Ours made its entrance in grand style:

And on his way out, the piper played,

"High Road to Gairloch,"

because of course he did.

Always.

Ta da!

A blurry chef with part of a sheep.

Ours Burns dinner featured a selection of outstanding speakers with our food, including the Revered Dr. Linda Flatley (who was seriously excellent) and Norman McCallum, this adorable Scotsman, who gave a VERY spirited rendering of the "Address" itself:

I think this may have been
just before he grabbed his

sgian-dubh out of his hose,

attacked the haggis with it,

and then proceeded to finish by

gesticulating wildly with it over his head.

The sgian-dubh, not the haggis,

although that would be impressive.

After our whisky toast to the haggis, to Burns, and to our friends and family near and far, it was time to start eating!  We began with cock-a-leekie soup, which was delicious and just the warmer we needed in the rainy weather (the rain was a bit harder, but otherwise, it was very Scottish in tone, ironically enough).

"Slàinte mhòr!"

As we ate our soup, we had the privilege of listening to a series of duets by Kira Ott on fiddle and Eric Rigler on pipes - first, lowland bagpipes (think: Outlander), and later, uilleann pipes (think: Titanic or Braveheart).  They were completely outstanding, and Rigler particularly, is kind of a rock star in this particular genre.  Take just a moment to click over to his Wikipedia page, here.  For reals, I'll wait.  Okay, back?  Holy sh*t, right?  Not only did he play the pipes for pretty much every major movie that involved them in the past 30 years, but he played "Amazing Grace" at RONALD REAGAN'S FUNERAL, you guys.  This dude seems to be kind of a legend.

Really, really good.

Anywhoodle, it was time for the main event, the eating of the haggis.  Now, if you're not sure what haggis is, you probably don't want to Google a picture of it, because you may never sleep again.  Don't say you weren't warned.  It's pretty much the innards of the sheep all ground up and cooked inside its stomach until it's done.  The stomach gets opened (in our case, by a vigorous Scotsman with a knife) and you eat what's inside.  It doesn't sound great, but ours was seriously delicious.  I mean, we eat chicken innards and cow innards all the time...and cabbage innards and melon innards, I suppose, for vegetarians...and those are freaking good, so it stands to reason that this would be as well.

Haggis (the brown ball-y bit)

with neeps and tatties and 

a port wine jus.

All delicious, even if those are carrots

and not real neeps (turnips).

We enjoyed more music and further presentations, including a toast to the lassies from Norm and a response to the laddies from Dr. Linda, and dessert was served, a Scottish cranachan that was a bit too bitter to really be enjoyed.

The berries and cream were good, though.

We finished our night off by eating bannocks and cheese, and then singing "Auld Lang Syne" together before we bundled up again and headed back out into the slightly lessened (thankfully) rain.  Overall, a bonnie time was had by all!

Later,

Amy