I Heart Haggis

Scotland's national drink is whiskey. Scotland's second national drink? IRN BRU.

IRN BRU as it is sold in Scotland is banned in the United States because it refuses to be tamed (and because it uses mildly controversial colorings to make it a shade of orange that an Oompa Loompa might refer to as "a little tacky.") But IRN BRU was only the beginnings of my culinary adventures in Scotland.

Lets get this out on the table. Haggis is the finely minced heart and lungs of a sheep that has been mixed with oatmeal and some spices and allowed to cook for a few hours in the stomach of said sheep. Sound delicious? It is.

After the Loch Ness Monster, Macbeth, and Groundskeeper Willie, my associations with Scotland revolved around this mystery food. Every time a movie or television show will take place with authentic Scotsmen, there is always some mention of Haggis, and I knew I had to try it.

Haggis is traditionally served with "tatties and neeps," Scottish slang for mashed potatoes and turnips ("Well, what else?" was my mother's sarcastic response.) You can also pay an extra pound and get it with whisky cream sauce. And even though cream sauce is one of the most ridiculously easy and cheap condiments one can make, I still (of course) found room in my budget for this as I am of the opinion that anything worth eating is worth eating even more with a cream sauce. Or gravy.

I asked the woman at the front desk of my hostel where I should go to get good haggis. She pointed me to two pubs. I went to the one that was closest. I'd try the next one the next night. The first pub was in the heart of Old Town Edinburgh, named "The End of the World," so called because the city walls used to be right next to the pub, and because there was a tax to go through the gates, most people never left, thus making the city gates the "end of the world" for as far as they were concerned. I ate at another one called "The Last Drop" because it was where they used to do the hangings in town.

My father was considering coming to visit with my brothers, and I told him we would have to go get dinner at a pub to get the true English experience. I could hear the concern in his voice that all I had been doing in England was double fisting Guinness night and day when he responded with a half hearted, "Well... that'd be interesting." So just to set the record straight: a pub is not a bar in the way that Americans think of them. Pubs are more like cultural places of gathering. Crick and Watson announced their discovery of the double-helix in a pub in Cambridge (which I ate at!) People bring their children to pubs in England, it's a communal thing.

But back to the haggis. I went into the pub, ordered my food, and read my book. There are several views on bringing the book when you dine alone. Some consider it a good way to relax, some consider it to be a pathetic attempt to not seem like someone who's going to die alone. In my opinion, it works either way. My food came and I dug into my first bite of haggis.

I've eaten the parts of the animal you're supposed to throw away before. I've had menudo, liver and onions, and I even tried chicken giblets. They're nice actually. And really, if you've ever eaten a hot dog, who are you to judge? And you really should try haggis. Like a nice, umami-infused sausage (to use today's culinary buzzword.) And if you happen to be a fashionable conscientious omnivore such as myself, you can feel superior that you're being resourceful. Like the Native Americans. Not like those foolish people who throw away perfectly edible organs when there are starving children in... that place. (When are my TOMS coming in the mail?) And maybe it's my Scottish ancestry, but I discovered I love haggis. In fact, I loved it so much that I ate it two

more

times.

And that wasn't the end of it. No siree. On my way back to the train station, I popped into a cafe, hoping to grab a sausage roll. They were out of sausage rolls, but they did have... BLACK PUDDING.

Black pudding is also known as blood pudding which is also known as blood sausage. If you think that's some cutesy, folksy, English name like "toad in the hole," it's not. It's exactly what it sounds like. And it was a most enjoyable breakfast. Warm, crispy, meaty, all those good things that I'm beginning to associate with offal.

What has become of me?