Planning a Burns Night Supper

We like any excuse for good food and after all the sadness that Christmas being over causes, it's nice to have something in January to look forward to. It can be a fun homeschool project.

We generally start with the decorations. The kids enjoy helping set the table! It generally involves their dad's horn drinking cup and a few weapons.

The food

January is an excellent month for hearty, filling food. The must-haves at a Burns Night Supper are:

• haggis
• neeps (mashed turnip or swede)
• tatties (mashed potatoes)

Last year we experimented and added:

• cranachan which my church friends taught me how to pronounce (emphasis on the beginning)
• selkirk bun which my mum-in-law calls 'just a really fruity loaf' and this is the perfect description for it. It doesn't even have cinnamon in it! The shock of having sultanas and no cinnamon actually makes it surprisingly original. You can really taste the sultanas and you really feel you're eating carbs. 

The Rituals

Robert Burns is known for his poetry after all. I don't know if these things are original Burns or if they are things he wrote down or just Scottish things but this is what we do.

We always say the Selkirk Prayer:

Some hae meat and canna eat,

And some wad eat that want it,

But we hae meat and we can eat,

Sae let the Lord be thankit.

For our kids we generally do an abbreviated form of the Address to the Haggis:

Fair fa' your honest, sonsie face, 
Great chieftain o the puddin'-race!
Aboon them a' ye tak your place,
Painch, tripe, or thairm:
Weel are ye worthy o' a grace
As lang's my arm.

But mark the Rustic, haggis-fed,
The trembling earth resounds his tread,
Clap in his walie nieve a blade,
He'll make it whissle;
An legs an arms, an heads will sned,
Like taps o thrissle [thistle].

and my husband will show the boys how to cut the haggis with a dirk - see picture below, it is a knife about the length of a newborn baby.