Poll Burns Night Doing anything special for the big night.

No, not doing anything at all to celebrate it. Hate swede and haggis and don't care much for Burns.

What about whisky?

Wine.

I can't drink thst either. Red wine gives me a splitting headache about twenty minutes after I've drunk it, and as a result I've gone off all of it.

I don't drink hard alcohol but my husband does so I've booked a distillery tour for this Friday. He can have all my samples. I'm just curious about how it's made.

By hard alcohol do you mean spirits?

Yes. We know what spirits are but we don't use that term.

Hard is very rarely used in that context over here.

I had a (non bacon related,) conversation with Farmerman when he talked about hard cider which is a no brainer over here.

If it's cider or cyder, pronounced zyder, it's always alcoholic, if it's not alcoholic it's either apple juice or an apple flavoured fizzy soft drink.

Even when hard is used in that context it needs to be clarified. Back in the 90s when alcopops became a thing the bottle said hard lemonade with the logo, but under all that it still had to say alcoholic lemonade. If it had just said hardlemonade there would have been confusion.

We use the term soft drink all the time, but for some reason we don't use its antonym, it's always called alcoholic drink, "beer wines and spirits" is the catch all phrase that means all alcohol, not just the above but cider, perry fortified wines and anything else that's sold as alcohol to drink.

Going back to Burns Night, it only gets a mention on the news over here.

I don't know about Scotland, I'm sure they go a bit mental, and I understand there's a lot of Scots ancestry in Canada.

It may explain why you are the only one who has commented.

I remeber reading a few years back that Scots ex patriots living in America were unable to get hold of haggis because it fell foul of American food regulations.

I suppose it's for the best.

My city, in fact, is named after a city/town in Scotland, as are many others. My clan is Graham and there are Highland Games all over Canada. But you still couldn't get me to eat haggis.

Apparently you can buy it somewhere here.

My husband's family is Scottish on his dad's side and he loved Robbie Burns. I found a couple of older copies of some of his works that I bought him one year. He was so pleased. It was his 90th b'day.

Haggis? I had to use the google again. I'm not eating that

who wants to eat foul smelling haggis when wve got burrito all over, nd strombolis. I drink dealcoholized beer now and I Love ST Pauli Girl NA. Most of these "Artisinal" beers are made jut for the alcohol contnt which can be as high as 19% (eg DOGFISH HEAD IPA). I used to like a smoother ALe like Chesterfield but Ive gonemostly abstemious. I only use a dry sherry for cooking SCAWLLOPS
As far as poetry, give me Frost, Kipling, Shelley and Service

what the hell is Swede? sounds toxic

I think it's a parsnip

It's no way near as nice as a parsnip.

We used to call swede turnip before we got the nice french turnips.

I think the Americans called them rutabagas, but that sounds like a catch all term.

A while ago I was working in an office with a Scotsman and an Indian lady.

She asked him what a haggis was and he went into grwat detsil describing all the horrible bits before ending with oats.

She replied, "It's quite healthy then."

We were both gobsmacked. Nobody had ever reacted like that before.

Ah... is it the yellow or white one? We have rutabagas (yellow) and turnips (white with purple). Your swede is the yellow rutabaga.

I don't like parsnips unless they're mashed with carrots.

My parsnips are roasted with honey.

The Scots like to push the fiction that the haggis is actually a native animal to children and credulous tourists.