Golden Spurtle World Porridge Making Championship

The Scots love their porridge. And they have a championship to show how important it is. The Golden Spurtle World Porridge Making Championship has been held in Carrbridge, Inverness-shire, Scotland each year since 1994, most recently on October 7, 2007. The event is judged by three judges with plenty of culinary experience and contestants can compete in two categories, traditional porridge or specialty porridge. The porridge is judged on consistency, color, and taste.

The winner of the traditional porridge category wins the entire championship. Contestants in the traditional porridge category can only use oats, water, and salt to make their porridge (which is the traditional way the Scots make porridge). The specialty porridge category is for all porridge makers who use other ingredients.

The the championship is preceded by a 5K run and a parade and twelve or thirteen people competed in the 2007 event.

Golden Spurtle World Porridge Making Championship

http://www.goldenspurtle.com/

To see a short news story on the event go to scotlandontv.tv and search for porridge or golden spurtle.

recent goings on

These past few weeks have been very full with the holidays, starting a new semester of school, planning a trip and collecting the gear for it, and looking for a job. This is my last semester before graduation, so a lot of my time will be going towards finding employment for after graduation, but I'll still try to blog once in a while, and then more frequently once I have finalized my plans for after graduation. I don't like to blog about any championships unless I have the time to adequately learn about the event, and now I have a very long list of championships that I've heard about that I need to learn more about.

The weekend of Jan. 19th I went on a snowshoeing and sub-zero camping trip in the Manti-La Sal National Forest in Utah with three friends. It was certainly a fun trip and very beautiful. But boy it sure got cold at night! Our tents were up in the mountains at 8,953 feet, and the low temperature 3,000 feet lower was 1°F. When we woke up we discovered that the inside of our tents were all frosted over from our breath. I don't think there are any championships for camping, but there certainly are for some of the winter skills that you can use in the backcountry, like snowshoeing, skiing, snowboarding, ice climbing, ect.

Here are a few photos from the trip.