How to make Haggis Lasagne

How to make a Haggis Lasagne: 

An Illustrated Guide. 

This blog post contains my first ever stab at a recipe of sorts, but you'll have to ready the story first!

I've had a good weekend. It was really busy, but did me some good, I think. I'd been feeling a bit crap for about a week, maybe two, but I now seem to be out the other end and feeling a bit stronger. 

Which is all a good thing because this weekend I... (now please keep up)

Left work and walked to the car hire place and picked up a shiny hire car. Drove home and picked up a friend and lots of things. Went to the University to teach a dance workshop but no-one showed up. Drove out of town, including a big loop back home again because we forgot the neeps* the first time round. I went to a Burns Supper, ate lots of Haggis, Neeps and Tatties, listened to a particularly bizarre Toast to the Lasses about how we can all pee in the sink if we really want to, and played in a ceilidh band.

This one. Here's us playing at a lovely little wedding in a cow shed.

I had a Saturday lie in, and then an exam for which I may well be awarded a certificate to teach Scottish Country Dancing. I filled a hire car with house plants and drove some more. I ate some tasty shepherds pie, unloaded some plants, built a wardrobe and drove some more. I went to church, went to the beach**, drove out in to the snow and nearly got the hire car stuck, went for a walk in the boggy snow and got lost, but rescued by some friendly locals***. We had a swift cuppa with a friend en route home, spun around really fast and went out to do a demonstration of some more dancing for an other Burns supper. Tesco, then home. 

There is a point to this. Robert Burns. This is the weekend when we celebrate the man, his poetry and love of whisky and women, and eat a lot of haggis. We were sent home with leftover haggis. 

Which has now become a Haggis Lasagne. It's really tasty, I've had sneaky seconds out of the oven dish, and I'm fairly good at stopping once I've had enough. It's good, so you should try it if you find yourself with a surfeit of haggis, and this is how. 

Meat Sauce

The haggis is replacing the minced beef, so fry off some onions, add some mushrooms chopped up quite little, add a good heap of haggis and whole carton of chopped tomatoes. Job's a good un. 

Bechamel Sauce

I once went to a restaurant where my friend asked if the Lasagne had Bechamel sauce in, because the menu wasn't committing to anything, the waitress said yes, so she ordered it, and then there was none. Just plain mean; it's the best bit!

I've always made fairly successful sauces by putting butter, flour and a little milk in a pan, on really low and then stirring like crazy for a long time, adding milk when it looks like it'll help. 

Stir like never before!

The internet may be a better place for quantities and proper instructions, I've always been one for some, and a decent dollop and that looks about right.

See, looks saucy.

And, even if it's not in the rules, now is the time to add cheese, Edam in this instance, but cheese always makes things better.

Construct your Lasagne

First off, some haggis sauce in the bottom of the dish. Just a wee bit to get going with.

Add a layer of pasta, filling in most of the gaps. No need for absolute neatness yet.

Add about half of the meat you have left. Splodge.

If you didn't know it was haggis...

Then pasta, half the bechamel, pasta, all the meat, pasta, all the bechamel, and extra cheese for luck.

Om nom

In the oven it goes, somewhere around 180, for about 40 minutes, or until you can wait no longer. 

Not about to win any photograpy competitions, but it was tasty.

Ta-Daa! Food. Serve with multi-coloured vegetables in a nice big bowl. Tasted surprisingly like slightly spicier normal beef lasagne. Mixing haggis with tomatoes makes the haggis less instantly identifiable and the end taste is meaty and spicy and pretty darn good. Enjoy!

We have enough left for another 4 decent portions, I reckon. 

Thanks for the free haggis!

*Neeps = Turnips = Swede, mashed with too much butter and actually quite tasty, unless you're my mother.

**Where we ate some tasty food at Chiquitos where they read the menu for you and will probably cut your food up and show you how to eat it if you give them half a chance. 

***Sorry, too busy being the annoying city-kid-using-phone-map-app-when-lost-in-countryside to  remember to take photos of the really pretty stuff around us. 

Why You Should Make February Resolutions

I didn't make any New Year's Resolutions, for many reasons.

I think trying to give up stuff just once a year is a bit silly, but then I'm a cynic. I think they just add an extra layer of stress and self-expectation. New Year is a holiday - it's for eating tasty things and having the time to watch a whole movie at once, and going for little walks just so you don't wind up too fat as a result of the eating and movies. It's for seeing people you like. I'm concentrating enough on not swearing too much in front of my mother to try and remember to do or not do a new thing I've just come up with. Besides, I live in Scotland, where we are expected to see in the new year with such frivolity and excess that we get nationally get two days off to recover.

In this instance another of my reasons was that I was in the middle of something that wouldn't have made it had I been putting new rules in to force.

So I'm having February Resolutions, but don't worry, I won't be taking them very seriously. I drew you a picture of them though.

Here it is.

6. Plan ahead. Scan stuff at work. Less of this take a photo of a picture nonsense. 

And I will explain them all in trusty bullet-pointy fashion. Skip the first one if you're tight on time.

• Number One: Stop getting talked in to doing stuff that I don't want to. A few years ago I took some tests and became partially qualified to teach Scottish Country Dancing for the Royal Scottish Country Dance Society.

Really Quite Stuffy, Since 1923.

Now I quite like Scottish Country Dancing, and I grew up in the world of the RSCDS - I understand it's secret language and unwritten rules. To the uninitiated, it's the most intimidating seemingly judgemental beast of an organisation. I was lucky in that I was aware of the existence of the world outside, and indeed of the world of those who danced out-with the safety of the society, and thus I escaped with a handful of social skills in tact.

I left home, and discovered that students can form there own clubs, and play fast and loose with a traditional dance form. They succeed where mass organisation fails, and manage to inject some life in to  a folk art. For years now I've been teaching SCD to students, using only small snippets of the stuff that got me a certificate. 

In about September I was asked if I wanted to do the second stage of this certificate. I should have said no. I tried to resist but eventually said ok under the unrelenting pressure of a single quite scary individual with good intentions firmly at heart. This was my mistake and I won't repeat it. The whole process has taken more of my time, energy and spirit than I would ever have wanted to allow it. In such a way I feel a little like I've been taken for a ride. One of the problems is that we're out to pass a test, and the rules and structures that will get one a pass are absolutely no good in the real world. A World where out to teach people how to dance, and that it is a fun and worthwhile hobby. I wouldn't teach the way I'm having to pretend to, and I don't agree I should have to. However my efforts at standing up for this are tempered by my desire for an easy life, and so we never really get anywhere. 

In the fullness of healing time I may find that I care enough to put together some decent critical feedback on the whole qualification process and it's strengths and flaws. Chiefly, you've got good interests, yes there needs to be a standard ... but ... the process us unnecessarily complex, awkward, time-intensive and hopelessly outdated. It is not founded on any modern research of good sports or dance teaching method outside of the organisation, it is not accredited by a a bigger reputable outside body, and it is wholly inaccessible for those not familiar with the RSCDS. 

I'll be finished by about teatime on Saturday 26th January. Hence the need for these resolutions to be a February thing. Rant over... Number one - be less of a pushover.

• Number Two: Dance Any Old Way I Like. One of favourite tame ceilidh bands like to occasionally just play a set of tunes, and the floor's still there, go do your funky thing. Now once upon a time, I would have disapproved of such a waste of good dance time, no doubt through a fear of not-knowing-what-everyone-ought-to-do-next. Now, I join in, and dance like the awkward uncoordinated thing that I am, with a big cheesy grin. On Hogmanay I even did this with my parents in the room. This is a big achievement. 

Not me here, but by way of something to aim for...

• Number Three: Go Swimming. This I have started. I am averaging one swim a week in the pool I have free access to (perks of the job!) so far, although this is mostly due to a spurt of enthusiasm last week having bought a pair of goggles. I need to keep it up - I like having arm muscles. 

• Number Four: Give the Tent a Workout. I bought half a tent back in October, and feel like I ought to have blogged about it only to find that I haven't. Terribly remiss of me. Here it is in action.

Isn't it pretty.

Having spent a reasonable but fairly large sum of money on it, I now need to gain value for that money. I also (and this'll be the tricky bit for me) want to manage some of this planned camping without resorting to hire cars. Here's hoping.

• Number Five: Do More Chillin'. This new job, although desk-based and sedentary, is still knackering me. Then I fill my weekends with FUN as though I need to fit in as much of the things I'd choose to do if I could to get me through another five days of needing to earn a living. I'd like a bit more balance. Frankly I just need more energy and stamina, but failing that, remembering that it's sometimes ok to have a quiet day will do me well. 

Off-topic. 

Finally a note to those who pay attention. I promised a post about my Christmas Jumper. It performed well, as you can sort of see here. I will tell you how I made it at some point. Honest, guv.

Tiny Little Pompom. 

No footnotes for you. Toodles