A
Lewisville resident and true American Southerner, Jim Walters, is
one of the last people most would guess to be behind the
manufacturing of a food known as the national food of Scotland -
haggis.
Despite the food's bad reputation -- which comes from the
traditional method to making haggis by stuffing a sheep's stomach
with oatmeal, onions, fat and chopped-up parts of the sheep that
most of us would rather see thrown away - Walters got hooked on the
stuff. He was traveling with his wife in Scotland in 1989 to trace
their Scottish and Irish heritage and ended up enjoying the
sausage-like dish at many of the bed-and-breakfasts they stayed at.
"Only dying has a worse reputation than haggis," Walters said.
"It wasn't at all what we expected. We really liked it and thought
other people would too."
After their return home, the couple went to the Texas Scottish
Festival and Highland Games in Arlington, expecting to be able to
enjoy some native foods such as haggis. Instead, they found more
traditional American foods.
"I was complaining and said 'I didn't go there to eat nachos and
hot dogs,'" Walters said.
Strict regulations based on mad-cow disease fears make it hard to
import haggis from its native country. So, the wheels started
turning and Walters went to work to create haggis that Americans
would enjoy. He started cooking up batches in his kitchen, using
U.S. Department of Agriculture-rated sirloin beef instead of the
traditional mutton, plus liver, onions, spices and oats. He created
the company Caledonian Kitchen.
Walters said he's a good cook, a skill he picked up while in the
Army. Luckily, he had an authentic tasting panel to try his recipes
out on thanks to a native Scottish woman with whom Walters worked,
and her friends.
"One morning, she said, 'I hope you wrote it down, because I
think you've got it," Walters said.
This weekend, he'll be hawking his favorite food, by the plate or
in cans, at the North Texas Irish Festival. The annual event will be
at Fair Park in Dallas and it the largest Celtic festival in the
southwest.
He began cooking up batches of haggis at the annual Texas
Scottish Festival and Highland Games in Arlington and ignored
people's requests for him to can the product.
"It was more like a deranged hobby at that time and I wasn't
interested in doing more," Walters said. "Then about three years
ago, I started getting serious and realized that any cannery that
cans chili can can haggis."
After discovering there weren't any "mom-and-pop" chili canneries
in Texas, Walters came across "Taylor's Famous Mexican Chili," a
99-year-old family business in southern Illinois. His first year of
production was in 2001 -- with 7,500 cans.
He since outgrown that small operation and moved production a few
weeks ago to southern Ohio. Walters also discovered that in the
surrounding agricultural community are two people who raise Scottish
Highland cattle, a breed that's been dates back to historical
Scotland.
His Web site, caledoniankitchen.com, received about 9,000
separate visitors last month, Walters said. Orders for his haggis
get sent as far away as Korea and to all over Canada and the United
States.
Caledonian Kitchen Haggis was the only American haggis invited to
compete against the legends of Scottish haggis-making in Scotland
Magazine's 2003 Haggis Tasting in St. Andrews, Scotland. They were
honored with fifth place, Walters said.
A 29-year employee of the national office of the Boy Scouts,
Walters, 56, retired two months ago and has more time to devote to
the business. Williams, a self-declared "history buff," was a Civil
War re-enactor before the business began to keep him busier.
Walters grew up in Alabama and lived in Louisiana before moving
to Lewisville in 1986. He is a lover of all things Scottish, from
the food to the music to the history, and is a member of several
associations dedicated to the spreading of the Scottish culture. In
September, he'll be part of a Scottish-themed cruise called "Kilts
in the Wind."
But his most important job now that he's got the time and the
inventory, is sharing haggis at more and more Scottish festivals.
"Way back when, it was made with leftover parts and was
poor-people's food," Williams said. "Everyone's fixated on the
sheep's stomach, but all that was is a cooking vessel." Other future
plans for the "Laird" (lord) of the Caledonian Kitchen include
several varieties of haggis, including lamb, venison and vegetarian.
He even half-jokes about making "rustic haggis" with sheep's tongue
and all sorts of horrible stuff just to test people and have fun
with.
Besides on the company's Web site, Caledonian Kitchen haggis,
(the normal beefy kind, nothing rustic) can be found locally at the
British Emporium in Grapevine.
