I Love Lamb

I love lamb. Love, love, love lamb. I also happen to love pasta. And red sauces. And fresh herbs. And cheese. So, this was the perfect dish.

First, start by making your own marinara. You can always use a bottle version, but what fun is that?

Start with a mirepoix with garlic. Here we have one large onion, two carrots, 2 celery stalks, and 3 cloves garlic. You need to chop them very finely, or you can throw it in a food processor like I did. Throw it in a pan with 1/4 cup olive oil. Sautee until soft.

Next up is the tomatoes. I used the rest of the canned tomatoes from this summer. If you don't have that, you can use about 32 ounces of crushed canned tomatoes.

Also, add the other stuff. Salt, pepper, sugar, oregano, basil, and bay leafs to taste.

Cook for an hour to two hours. How ever much time you have. Remove from pan.

Now that you have a marinara sauce, you start with the actual dish.

At about this time, have your husband make a raspberry mojito with raspberries from last summer.


First, start by sauteing two shallots and 3 cloves garlic in a bit of olive oil.

After it is soft, add a pound or so of ground lamb.
Brown the lamb.
Add a cup of red wine and reduce by half.

Add four cups of the marinara sauce. Let it all cook together for 10 minutes or so.

When your noodles, which you already started, are about done, add in 1/2 cup torn mint and 1/2 cup ricotta.

After they are stirred in, add in your full pound of rigatoni, which you have cooked.

Stir all together and serve immediately.
This is one of the best things I have ever made. It is very, very good. If you have the time an a weekend I highly suggest taking the time to make this.

I Suck

Yeah, so it has been a month almost. Here's some things I made:

First up was boneless pork "ribs" with an Orange Asian Sauce.
This did not turn out well. The ribs were really a cut up pork loin. I was duped by the Whole Foods butcher. They ended up dry and not very good, but the sauce was great.

The broccoli was sauteed in a bottled black bean sauce. CJ said he liked it, so that means it must have been good. He claims to not like vegetables.

Next up is steamed fish. Whole Foods says that this Chilean Sea Bass isn't terrible and it isn't endangered. I really tried to make this pretty, but I failed.

It is cooked with quinoa, sugar snap peas, and a soy sauce reduction. It was very, very good and healthy.


This never was posted because the condiments are just too much. It obstructs the numminess.

This is a Mexican Pork Stew. It came straight from my Rick Bayless cookbook. It had a very smoky flavor due to chipotle peppers. A little spicy and nicely flavored, this was a hit. The Mexican cheese and avocado made the overall taste wonderful.

Not About Food

This isn't about food.

This is about a little girl. She has Downs and cancer. She is going through her last round of chemo, which is the hardest. All the family wants is to be together.

For them to be together, mom has to sell 20 mascara tubes for dad to take one day off work so they can make as much as he gets paid. It is Mary Kay mascara, and I hear it is pretty good stuff.

So, go buy some mascara.

Another Meatless Monday

A nice vegan meal for us on this Meatless Monday.

The main is roasted butternut squash with toasted walnuts and lentils. It is topped with a squeeze of lime (and cilantro that I forgot for the picture) which really makes the flavors pop. The rice is spiced with saffron, cardamom, cloves, and cinnamon. The spinach is plain sauteed spinach.

Good, easy, and cheap, just how we like it.

Cruise Food = Not Very Good

I spent the last five days on a Royal Caribbean cruise. While the cruise was fun, the service was great and the ship's workings amazing, the food was medicore at best.

Basically there are two places you can eat on the ship: the main dinning room and a buffet service cafe.

So, let's start with the buffet. Think Old Country Buffet. I ate every breakfast I made it to there and three lunches. While the food there was bad, I did have a couple things there. The eggs and bacon were good and I had a decent lamb curry at lunch. Otherwise the food was pretty bad.

So, the main dinning room. This is where we had all the dinners and two lunches. Blah. Meat was overdone. One night duck was on the menu. I asked if it is medium rare. I got a strange look and was told it was well done. Yeah, of course it is. The waiter still talked me into getting it. It was overcooked and dry. Boo to that.

I did have a very nice escargot appetizer. It was made with a garlic herb butter sauce and were done perfectly. I also had a tasty onion soup with gruyere toast. The desserts were also passable, though not amazing like they should have been.

The best meal we had was off the boat, after the cruise. We had a lot of time to kill in Fort Lauderdale. We stopped by some tourist trap fish place. I got the best fish and chips of my life. Well, the chips weren't that great, but the fish was awesome. Of course, I lost a tooth filling during the meal, but I guess it was worth it to have the first good meal in six days.