Tag Archives: lamb

Rosemary round up

I forgot the rosemary yesterday when we walked over to the grocery store and picked up a leg of lamb. My bad. So I drove over early to pick some up. Also my bad.

How could I forget that my grocer stocks their produce aisles from 8:00 to 9:30?

The place looked like it might the day before a blizzard. Ravaged. Marked by emptiness.

There was no rosemary. Not a single stinking sprig. No lemons. No green beans.

Who thinks that’s a good business model? (And who am I to expect their business model to conform to my need?)

I next headed down Route 9 to another grocery store to fill the gaps in my list, which you need to understand is decidedly not my style. In fact, it is so not my style that when I listen to a friend, probably “a shopper” but not necessarily, describe going to multiple shops to get what they were looking for, it’s as if I’m listening to someone from another planet. I’d rather wear something that doesn’t fit. Or go without.

See: my five-year-old bathing suit.

I am already annoyed, but it just so happens I’m wearing socks like slide. You know the ones — every twenty or thirty steps or so you need to reach down and tug them up or you’ll soon find a naked heel meeting the inside of your shoe.

The question could be: why do some socks do this? But heading down the long dairy aisle for vanilla ice cream and bending to tug, I realized the question could just as easily be: why don’t ALL socks do this?

Meanwhile, in Los Angeles rosemary grows in freaking HEDGES. I can’t help but look back and find a couple of pics.

Happy Easter to anyone who celebrates! I’m off to marinate my lamb in rosemary, parsley, oregano, thyme, lemon, olive oil, and tons of garlic.

Omelets and character

“The way you make an omelet reveals your character.” – Anthony Bourdain

I make a decent omelet with a fair amount of finesse. So I can’t be all bad, right?

Pork sirloin w/ red onion relish & crispy bacon

I had some unbelievably good food in Italy and it turns out that I missed cooking. The restless way I felt at around dinner-prep-time was my clue.

Local greens and “burnt finger” lamb*

This morning, I took advantage of being on Europe time and went to the grocery store early. At 6:20, the place was gloriously empty!

Once home, I put up a batch of bone broth and made a delicious mushroom, cheese and scallion omelet. Yeah!

*”burnt finger lamb” so named because you won’t want to wait to pick it up.

Easter Sill

Happy Easter, all!

After I received a comment from a cyber-friend that she still hid eggs for her teenaged sons (enjoy her blog here), we decided to do the same. Besides, I DO like to find them later in the year (we’re talking chocolate eggs, here — not hard boiled!).

If I had inherited my father’s Instructive Prank gene — you know, that’s the chromosome that makes a parent unscrew light bulbs that have been left on one time too many, or that sends a soccer ball sailing down into a gully at property’s swampy edge, only to deflate it the next time it is left in the middle of the hall? — I might have hidden a bag of chocolate eggs here in the sneakers and dirty socks:

For better or worse, that’s not quite my style.  The lamb is marinating, although not  in the full six cups of red wine that Julia Child recommends. I only had a handful of bay leaves, too — not the 37 or 40 that she specifies. Still, it promises to be delicious.

Something distracted me last night between cups two and three in my yellow cake preparations. I stood there wondering, “Should I add another cup or not?!!”  The worst of it is, I knew better!!  Otherwise, at Christmas time, I wouldn’t have asserted to a room full of friends at a cookie swap that I’d reached an age where I needed to measure ALL MY FLOUR IN ADVANCE.

Oh well.  The cake bombed. Sadly for my waistline, it is still pretty yummy and I will manage to consume more of it than I should.  The lemon squares, on the other hand, came out just right.

Given the situation with my sister, I have this opportunity to see how little today is about the food anyway.  It’s about occasion.  We will be transporting our meal to the rehab where she currently lives, and will share the time as a family — not worrying too, too much about the temperature of the food or the cake’s crumb or lack thereof.


It is a stunningly beautiful day here in Eastern Mass. Exactly the kind of day that could make one warm to the idea of rising from the dead.


One of these crosses is going to be for my friend Joan.  She loves Easter more than any other holiday and I am thinking and thinking of her today.