Parsley, Sage, Rosemary & Thyme (Featuring My Leg of Lamb Recipe)

My garden is really growing, and one of the things I love about gardening is reaping the benefits of all of my work - getting to eat the fresh, yummy, cost effective food, and getting to enjoy the beautiful flowers. 

This weekend we enjoyed a visit from my good friend Maggie, her husband Sean, and their two children Mary (7) and Michael (5). I knew Sean and Maggie during my college years (they went to BU and I went to BC), and Maggie was the Matron of Honor at our wedding. We have grown close through the years, even though she's spent the last several years in Florida. Thank God for the internet and the telephone!

Sean and Maggie were visiting for their dear friend Eric's ordination to the priesthood. They had been looking forward to this visit for a while, and decided to make an entire vacation out of their trip. Coincidentally, the ordination fell on Maggie's birthday!  Her son Michael's birthday falls on the day before Maggie's, so I was very blessed to enjoy the company of one of my dearest friends on her birthday!  

I prepared Leg of Lamb, using fresh herbs from my garden. I even dug up my first bulb of garlic from the garden!  It was a yummy success!

Garlic, Rosemary & Lemon Thyme from the garden

I suppose this post would not be complete without the recipe for this leg of lamb...

So here you go!

INGREDIENTS for DRY RUB

1 7lb Leg of Lamb (boneless or 1/2 boneless)

3 Tablespoons of Fresh Rosemary (chopped finely)

2 Tablespoons of Lemon Tyme (chopped finely)

6 Cloves of Garlic (minced)

Juice of 1/2 a lemon

3 Tablespoons of Extra Virgin Olive Oil

1 Teaspoon of Fresh Ground Pepper

2 Teaspoons of Kosher Salt

3/4 a cup of Red Wine...preferably from the Rhone Valley...here's what I use.

Serve with Fresh Mint Jelly on the side, and use the remainder of the wine for drinking to compliment the meal for those who would like it.

Now, I've made leg of lamb lots of different ways, and hands down, I have found that the absolute best way to make leg of lamb also happens to be the easiest - cooked on LOW in a crock pot for 8 hours. Lamb is a tough meat, and the way to make it melt-in-your-mouth tender is by literally letting it cook itself in its own juices. I have found other methods of cooking lamb to result in a piece of meat that is far too dry. The crock pot solves this problem. I will not be cooking leg of lamb any other way from this point forward.

Thaw the lamb 2 days in advance, and make the dry rub the night before you plan to cook the lamb. Season the lamb with the dry rub, olive oil, lemon juice, and stick it in a plastic ziplock bag and stick it in the fridge. Also place 1/4 of a cup of the red wine in the bag with the lamb. Let it marinate in the bag. In the morning, take the lamb out of the bag, stick it in the crock pot, pour 1/2 a cup of the red wine over the meat, and cook it on LOW for 8 hours. Don't open the lid. Don't mess with the lamb. Just leave it there.  Prepare to be amazed. It's is THAT good.

Now you know my secret, and now you also know how easy it is. I hope you don't think less of me ;-)

I have 9 varieties of gourmet lettuce growing in my garden this year, and I saved some of the best of it for this meal.  Also included in the salad were scallions, peppers, and some tomatoes from the garden. And I even through some pansies on top from the garden - they're not only edible, but they really do "make" the salad, don't they?

Also featured in the salad (not from the garden) were goat cheese crumbles, dried cranberries, black olives, and my homemade balsamic vinaigrette.

I also made a caprese salad - the fresh basil from the garden was delicious. It was the first time this summer I had harvested it. 

Last but not least, I had an ice cream cake made from our favorite local ice cream chop. They even accommodated our gluten-free guests by replacing the "cake" portion of the ice cream cake with freshly picked strawberries from their farm - talk about outstanding service!  It was absolutely delicious, and I'm looking forward to our new godchild's baptism on Saturday which will give me an excuse to order another one!

I had been looking forward to this visit for a long time, and looking back, this saying comes to mind: "If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans."  I think my cooking was the only thing that actually went as planned during this visit. Our guests were supposed to stay in the Guest Suite (you know, the one I had been working on for nearly a year?) but that fell through last minute when we encountered a septic problem (to make a long story short, the man who was supposed to hook up all of our toilets to town sewer missed one, requiring us to have to dig up our yard again...)  Then on Monday we were supposed to go to Davis Farmland. Last time these friends of ours visited that is where we went, and their children enjoyed it so much that we all decided this would be the perfect way to celebrate little Michael's birthday. I made the rookie parenting mistake of telling Leo and Jules about this nearly every day for a year, and getting them thoroughly excited for this event - the event that got COMPLETELY RAINED OUT due to the one rain storm that happened to hit (you know, the first rain storm we had had in TWO WEEKS) that just so happened to hit on the day we were scheduled to go to Farmland...

So...

We were stuck in the house with 5 little kids in the pouring rain and needed to change our plans immediately...the best we could come up with was a trip to the roller skating rink...the tweens in skimpy outfits and the teeny-bopper music certainly doesn't compare to the tranquil/non-commercial ambiance of Farmland, but we made the best of it. Not only was it the children's first experience roller skating (with the exception of Leo who had been there once before), but it was also Maggie's first time playing Laser Tag. Ben, Sean, Michael, Maggie, Mary, Leo & Jules went into the arena with about 10 pre-teen girls. AND MAGGIE BEAT THEM ALL. I got a kick out of watching it on the screen outside with Joni asleep on my back!  

So we made the best out of the bad weather...true friendship can triumph over even the worst of thunderstorms.