Scottish vegetable

One of my kids said she went to one of these a few years ago with me. It was actually a "Scottish festival", where they do all sorts of stuff to celebrate Scotland. I went to one last weekend.

For food, they had bridies and Scottish meat pies. A little heavy on the onion flavoring, but I suppose that counts literally as a Scottish vegetable. Also a haggis puff roll or something like that. I guess when you're several generations removed from riding the boat over to America, you lose any real desire to connect THAT far.

I'm Scottish on my dad's side, Irish on my mom's, so it's interesting enough to go to one of these things every few years. They have "highland games", which of course is highlighted by tossing the caber. For kids, they could have a try throwing a cardboard tube -- probably something that carpet was rolled around at a store at some point.

There were some musicians doing folk songs, and a few bagpipe marching bands from around Connecticut. Everyone's dressed in kilts, men and women, with the knee-high socks with tassels. Girls were doing highland dancing in very colorful outfits.

I thought one of the better reasons to go is to check out the clan-specific merchandise. Every clan's got a tartan -- their own specific plaid pattern that identifies the family. So if you want to buy a scarf, a tam, or a kilt, you can buy your family's. I've already got plenty of stuff in my particular plaid. I was actually surprised not to see anyone with what I've got -- tartan ink. There were a few Celtic designs on various men and women there, but nobody else seems to have a plaid tattoo. Guess I'm unique there.

And when you look for "scottish tattoo" on Google or whatnot, usually you get references to a "military tattoo", but I don't think that has anything to do with needles. I'm not really sure why they call it that.

And it was almost 90 degrees out....the previous time I'd gone, it was like 55 and raining. Freakin' October.