St Andrew's Day and Dram Fest

I love to match our dinners to special days, not just birthdays, Easter and Christmas but saints days and country celebration days too. It's a great way to try new food and recipes.

November 30th is St Andrew's Day, the Patron Saint of Scotland but as our main Scottish celebration day is Burn's Night early in the year yesterday's meal was a 'nod'.

Our main was steak - Aberdeen Angus steak - from Aldi, we have tried many other supermarkets and butchers but still prefer theirs, great value too.

I found a new recipe for Scottish baking which included a marmalade cake, quite different as it was made using oil not butter. A very moist cake with plenty of orange flavour, next time I might crystallize some orange peel for the topping.

Of course it would not be a Scottish meal without a 'wee dram'. Hubby and I learnt so much about whisky on our trip to Scotland last May, you can read about our adventures in my May posts. I really enjoyed our visit to the Glen Moray Distillery and I especially liked their Chardonnay Cask, my St Andrew's Day toast.

Earlier in November Hubby and I, along with three friends, visited Dram Fest in Leicester, a superb day hosted by 23 Wine and Whiskey. We have done many wine tasting but never a whisky tasting - but we will again !

It was a superb day, over 250 whiskies with a chance to chat to the actual distillers, so much to learn, so much to taste. We all had an amazing day as you can see from the photos.- thank you to everyone.

A super day had by all ...

.... and we were 'papped'