Day 104: Here, on the wrong side of the dateline, it is January 25th, causing a small amount of confusion as to when Robert Burns' birthday should be celebrated with the traditional Burns Night dinner. Mine will be tonight, and a number of factors have gone into my decision to make a "faux haggis," "mock haggis," or whatever else you want to call it. A few years ago, the owner of the local company where I have always bought my haggis exposed himself to be a racist in several comments on his personal Facebook account. I said (with some profane adjectives), "That does it for me. I don't have to have haggis, and I feel I must stand by my principles." I stopped shopping with him as, apparently, did quite a few other people. The shop has gone out of business. Since then, I've been on a haggis hunt (the little buggers should really be classified as endangered for as rare as they have become), but to no avail. I cannot abide the thought of a canned haggis, and short of mortgaging my house for the shipping fees on a fresh one, I have been unable to find any other supplier. Frustrated, I began searching for an alternative, and came up with a recipe from The Kilted Chef which sounds like it should approximate the real thing fairly closely in both taste and texture. It uses chicken livers in place of sheep organ meats, and seems to be much easier to prepare. A wee drap o' Glen Livet should level out any inequities. Lang may yer lum reek!
