Categories
Food It Happened to Me

My plans for Burns Night 2025

Here’s the main course for dinner tonight…

Joey de Villa’s hand, holding two cans of Stably Quality Foods’ Scottinsh-style haggis.

…and that’s because it’s January 25th today, making tonight Burns Night, the night when we celebrate the birth of Scottish poet Robert Burns:

An etching of Robert BurnsHaggis is a kind of sausage, in that it only sounds bad when you describe what goes into it: “a savory pudding containing sheep’s pluck (heart, liver, and lungs), minced with chopped onion, oatmeal, suet, spices, and salt, mixed with stock, and cooked while traditionally encased in the animal’s stomach” (although in modern times, it’s encased in sausage casing).

It’s actually delicious, and it’s typically served this way…

A plate of haggis, tatties, and neeps, sitting on a red tartan napkin. There is scotch in a whiskey glass in the background.

…and in case you were wondering, tatties are potatoes, neeps are turnips, and yes, there’s scotch on the side. I also plan to make a whiskey sauce to pour on everything.

And finally, since sausage is for dinner, it’s only fitting that sausage is also for dessert:

Soma’s chocolate “salami” in its packaging, which includes the twine “net” that traditional meat salami comes in.This is Chocolate Salami, from Toronto chocolatier Soma, which is a “sausage” made of chocolate, candied orange peel, sun dried cherries, pieces of feuilletine (crispy flakes of caramelized crêpes), coconut, almonds, hazelnuts, nibs and rum.

Here’s what it looks like when sliced:

A slice of Soma chocolate salami.We’ll probably start dinner with this reading of Robbie Burns’ famous poem, Address to a Haggis, delivered with the proper gusto by true Scotsman Cameron Goodall:

Categories
Florida It Happened to Me The Current Situation

Palm trees and a puffy vest

Joey de Villa in a swetaer, wool blazer, and puffy vest, smiling in his front yeard, with palm trees behind him.

My friends in my old home town, Toronto, won’t find Tampa’s current temperatures cold, but by local standards, it’s downright frigid.

The past couple of mornings have started at a temperature that Torontonians would consider balmy this time of year: 4°C (39°F). With Tampa’s humidity typically in the 90% range, it feels more like 0°C (32°F). I pulled out the olive drab puffy vest that my Dad gave to me as a Christmas gift ages ago — he had a thing for giving me warm clothing — and snapped the photo above to let my Mom know how I’m doing.

Map of northern and central Florida, showing temperatures in cities from Gainesville in the north and as far south as Lakeland and Melbourne.
I added the temperatures in REAL units, as opposed to Herr Doktor von Fahrenheit’s old-timey measure for phlogiston in the ether.

It looks like it’s going to get a little colder this weekend, which is going to be a challenge for the sizable portion of the local population that’s perpetually in shorts and flip-flops.

But at least it isn’t snowing in Tampa…

Categories
Stranger than Fiction

“You had me at ‘grenade’” / “Show me the MAC-10!”

Clearly, I missed out by not watching the director’s cut of Jerry Maguire!

But seriously — when films go abroad, especially to Asia and Africa, they’re promoted with hand-painted signage made by people who haven’t seen them, and often are following the most cursory description of the plot and a couple of photos.

The roots of “Show me the money!” are still visible in the translation from film to poster…

…but I have no idea what’s going on with dismembered Rod Tidwell (Cuba Gooding Jr.’s character). I think the machete-wielding guy to Rod’s left is supposed to be Frank Cushman’s dad (played by Beau Bridges), and that his holding Rod’s severed arm, which in turn is holding a grenade, is an action-film allegory for what actually happens in the movie.

Want to see more movie posters like this? Deadly Prey Gallery is an Instagram account that features wild Ghanian interpretations of American films.