Lancashire Night

Time is just flying by and I'm finding it difficult to spare a few moments for blogging. I did promise to tell you about our Lancashire night though.

We had such fun on Burns Night back in January that me and my friends, Sue and Gordon, decided to try celebrating other occasions, momentous or downright obscure! Most recently, we had a Welsh Night in October for Dylan Thomas' birthday and next up was Lancashire Night.

We chose the Saturday nearest to 27 November which commemorates the day in 1295 when Lancashire sent its first representatives to parliament and I decided to steal a few ideas from Burns Night for the running order and entertainment.

Once everyone had arrived and was settled with a drink in hand, I proudly read out the Lancashire Proclamation, wearing my handmade brooch. The Proclamation is a bit long so you can read it here.

Next up was a spot of morris dancing to the Manchester Hornpipe. Imagine if you will, 5 fully grown adults ranging in age from 20s to 50s, including 6'2" Christopher, parading around the living room waving red roses in the air and making arches with the roses for everyone else to shimmy underneath. Well, you get the picture. My sides ached from laughing.

And so to the food. At Burns Night, there's an ode to the haggis, so it seemed only right to have an ode to the black pudding (which I found here).

Black pudding made us what we are.
It gave us wit and wisdom.
For the blood of pigs runs through our veins,
Or at least our digestive system.
Black pudding, black pudding, I give this ode
To you all, be you Scottish or foreign.

The Lancashire peeler was symbolically presented to the pudding and it was time to serve dinner.

While I dished up, the others listened to Chippy Tea by The Lancashire Hotpots.

Funnily enough, Lancashire hotpot was on the menu, made using this recipe (and very tasty it was too). There was also the black pudding and black peas, pickled red cabbage and pickled beetroot - all traditional Lancastrian fare.

While we ate, we watched the Wallace and Gromit classic, The Wrong Trousers, which is set in Wigan and is by Preston-born, Nick Park.

For dessert, more Lancashire goodies. We clearly like pastry very much! There's shop-bought custard tarts and Eccles cakes, and homemade Goosnargh cakes and jam slice. Sue's 8-year-old son had 4 of the Goosnargh cakes and they took the rest home with them! I hadn't made jam slice before even though I've eaten it many times - will have to share the recipe sometime as it was so simple and a brilliant use for my blackberry jam.

And there ended the Lancashire part of the evening as we then settled down to watch Maleficent. Hope you enjoyed hearing about all our silliness! We definitely did and I think Chris has invited himself back for Burns Night and probably all the other evenings he suggested we had!

I thought I'd end by giving you an update on my crochet blanket which I'm doing as part of Attic24's Crochet-A-Long. It's actually a bit longer than this now but I forgot to take a photo when the light was good. I'm more or less following her sequence of colours but have also added in a couple of my own, like the dark purple, just so that it's not quite the same as everyone else's. I'm enjoying it so much and can't wait to work on it each evening. Unfortunately it's going to have to take a back seat shortly as I have more urgent crafting matters to get on with. I foolishly offered to lead a session on mug hugs at my quilt group 'towards the end of next year' and found out last week that I've been pencilled in for February! I haven't even made one yet!! Keep calm and make mug hugs! x