The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men

Last October I joined a dinner group. It's a pretty sweet set-up: every week, Monday through Thursday, we gather for dinner. There's 12 of us, so I only have to take a turn once every three weeks. Cooking for 12 isn't much more costly or time-consuming than cooking for 4 or 8 would be, and I get 11 free well-above-average meals each cycle. It's also helped me develop my cooking skills, at least a little.

While I am still not much of a chef, my party planning and hosting skills were already top notch, and now I just get more frequent chances to show them off. My roommate Petey is in a different dinner group, and last week we joined forces to throw both groups a Burns Night the likes of which the Turnberry Apartments has probably never seen (even though the complex and its substreets--Inverary, Muirfield, and Royal Troon--are all named after Scottish golf courses). When I told my groupies we were having a Burns Supper, many assumed I meant Mr. Burns. While that would be a logical guess, and would be an "excellent" (tent your fingers while you say it) theme for a dinner party, here's how it really went down.

I invited my family to come, but only my sister Chelsea took me up on the offer. There's a good chance this was the final time I ever wear my kilt; I'm just too big for it. The sporran, or "purse thingy," as my mom calls it, is supposed to hang loosely. Oops.

After welcoming the guests and briefing them on how the night would go, we started with a salad course. But this is the main event of Burns Night--the haggis, warming on the stove. Looks delicious, doesn't it?



Usually the haggis is piped into the room and set before the host. None of our guests plays the bagpipes, so we used YouTube. Here's Petey reading Burns' "Address to a Haggis."

We had the traditional haggis, neeps (mashed turnip), and tatties (mashed potatoes) as our main course, but figuring some wouldn't be huge fans of the haggis (we were right), we turned the tatties into shepherd's pie so everyone would get enough to eat.



While we ate, Bryan gave the "Immortal Memory," a speech of sorts that gives detail about the life and work of Robert Burns. He capped it off by singing Burns' "My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose." Brilliant. Then it was time for dessert...

There's only a few things better than trifle, and one of them is TWO trifles. Looks amazing, doesn't it? Petey did most of the work on these, and I was very pleased at how they turned out, aesthetically and gastronimally (that's a word, right?).



While we ate dessert, Jason gave the traditional "Toast to the Lassies"...



...followed by Amy's "Reply to the Toast to the Lassies." A few others took a stab at cold readings of some Burns poems, with some funny results on some pronunciations. I was very appreciative of everyone who participated. I really enjoyed myself.

So that's a Burns Supper. You're all invited next year. Maybe we'll try a deep-fried haggis in 2013!