John and I happened to be in New Castle on on Robert Burns Night a couple of years ago. We had never heard about the night and the meal to celebrate the Scottish poet Robert Burns.

We quickly learned about it though because all the restaurants were booked up to feed people haggis!

Burns night happened to be labeled on our 2013 calendar this year and we decided to give it a vegetarian celebration. I know– how? Well, we tried out a few of the rituals and had some good scotch whiskey courtesy of Josh.

Hold on to your socks- my honey, the teetotaler, had a sip during our toast to the laddies and the ladies.

Can you guess which scotch is John’s?

We had veggie Cornish pasties and made a to-do as you would for the haggis when we took them out of oven.

If only we had some bagpipe music in the background!

The whole house smelled like malt vinegar due to our salty pub-style roasted potatoes.

I’m not a huge scotch drinker so we moved on to ale. This one had hints of maple syrup, rye and bananas.

Before eating we read a very short poem by Robert Burns and felt like we gave the night a good go of it!

For dessert we had dark chocolate Digestives which tasted amazing with the beer (who knew?)

To cap off our trip down Northern England memory lane we watched The Trip which is all about the North and food…Cheers.