Robbie Burns: Part II

The early Scots were known for being a fairly tough race. The Romans built a wall to keep them out. This just gave the Scots something else to destroy when they came through on a raid.

After having cooked a so-called Scottish meal, I'm pretty sure that I know why the Scots were so tough. They ate potatoes and turnips. Now it's not the actual eating of these root vegetables that makes you strong - it's preparing them.

I had very carefully figured out what time everything had to be on the stove by and so was trying to prepare the food accordingly. I started with the potatoes. Scrub 'em, peel 'em, chop 'em up and plop them in the pan. It was at the "chop 'em" part that I ran into trouble. These potatoes were not exactly easy to deal with. They were slippery and futhermore they were hard. I began to wish I had a better knife - ideally a cleaver. My brother has one. We used it to chop frozen meat. It would have chopped the potatoes by itself and poured me a drink. But no, I was stuck chopping potatoes. And then it happened. I brought the knife down and discovered on impact that the potato had slide and I was in the process of chopping my fingers. Sucking three fingers at once, I swore loudly. My great-grandfather was a sailer. I always thought I could have learned a lot from him.

I staunched the drips of blood, wrapped band-aids over all the cuts and finished the potatoes. I was a trooper. I ended up with more potato pieces then would fit in the pan. I decided that they would boil down and crammed them all in. The joys of cleaning starch off a stove!

Then I looked at the turnips. Now I knew from experience that turnips are harder than potatoes. One of my friends had assured me that he liked turnips. He had even offered to help carry home the Burns supplies which meant that we had ended up with two large turnips. He had choosen them carefully - they were huge and they were hard. I stabbed the smaller one with my knive. All the other knives went and hid. They weren't stupid.; this thing was going to eat knives for breakfast. I managed to make an incision. Then I tried to pull the knife out. I left it there. I had already managed to slice three fingers at once. If I tried to attack the two turnips, I was going to lose a hand. I picked up the phone, "You know those turnips you choose? . . . oh and don't forget to bring a knife."

The back-up chopper arrived on time with his knife. It was a typical guy's knife: heavy duty and sharp. He started on the turnips. I would have started at one end and tried to hack slices off going across. He started by making the turnip square. Then it didn't skid across the chopping board when you tried to hack bits off it. Except that he didn't hack bits off it, he cut slices and then made cubes. It was the most symmetrical chopping of a turnip I've ever seen. Except that all those perfect cubes wouldn't fit in the pan. Two large turnips create a lot of chopped turnip. We had to break out the tupperware. They were carefully stacked into a box and placed in the fridge.

I still have ten fingers. Last time I chopped potatoes, I made them rectangular, then I hacked them into bits.