Not Starry Starry Night – Vincent van Gogh

As it’s Burns Night tonight I made the vegetarian haggis from the recipe which was in the Guardian earlier in the week. You can see it here. I’m not inflicting a photo of my version as haggis is never appetising looking but it tasted good anyway. I changed it slightly, substituting soy sauce for the Marmite as I hate the stuff and I added more pulses in the shape of haricot and cannellini beans. I also halved the quantities as there are only the two of us around the table nowadays, but I still have plenty leftover – so no cooking required tomorrow, luxury!

Below is a photo of the 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle which we began about a week ago when the weather was really cold and we were just semi hibernating. It didn’t take us as long as I thought it would. The worst part was definitely the road/pavement at the bottom of the picture, the cobble stones. I originally thought it was Starry Starry Night (or The Starry Night) but it isn’t. It’s The Cafe Terrace at Night.

jigsaw puzzle

Now when you are reading or saying van Gogh remember to pronounce the ‘gh’ properly – a lovely guttural sound as in the word ‘loch’ – none of this Vincent van Go nonsense! In fact the first G should be guttural too.

I’m now searching for another jigsaw puzzle which I bought recently, it’s of a British Rail poster of The Trossachs. I tidied it away before Christmas and now I can’t find it, don’t you just hate when that happens. That’s my excuse for preferring clutter, at least then I know where everything is!

Have you seen the Laurel and Hardy film which is about a disaster which befalls Ollie when Stan starts a jigsaw puzzle – hilarious.

Vegetarian Haggis

It’s coming up to that time of the year again – Burns Night, and the maker of my favourite vegetarian haggis seems to have given up making them, I can only find their normal haggis in the supermarkets. I tried another maker and it was not a good experience, it had red kidney beans in it and they were really hard – a bit of a worry as they didn’t seem to have cooked.

I intended making up my own recipe but in today’s Guardian I spotted a recipe for vegetarian haggis and it’s more or less what I was going to do anyway, although I must admit that I wouldn’t have thought of putting black treacle into it.

Anyway, if you are also looking for a vegetarian haggis recipe, have a look here.

In the accompanying article Felicity Cloake says that the main flavour in haggis is offal, I don’t agree, in any haggis I have had the main flavour has been the pepper/spices. That’s why I decided long ago to stick to the veggie type as the flavour is very similar and you don’t feel squeamish at the thought of what is inside it!