The best traditions in my family all revolve around food, and Easter a day reserved for stuffing our faces with delicious lamb. My feelings about lamb are this: If you don't like it there is something wrong with your brain/taste buds. This was the first year that I decided to help with the food, and I made two sauces to go with the lamb: mint pesto, a family favorite, and tzatziki, a condiment that I'd never made before. Unsurprisingly I went to serious eats for the tzatziki
recipe, and it was delicious. Unfortunately yours truly was a little... overzealous... with the
mandolin and ended up slicing off the tip of my right ring finger. I am happy to report that, despite said trauma, yours truly managed to finish the recipe and we had both sauces that I intended to serve. I am not particularly proud to admit that I had to wait to finish said recipe until we returned from the hospital and that I nearly passed out not once, not twice, but three times. Luckily my uncle is a surgeon who works at said hospital (which is five minutes away from my grandparents house) so as soon as I mutilated myself he took me to his office and patched me right up. I debated posting a picture of the wound, but it's pretty gross so I'll spare you. Enough gross stuff, here's a picture of the mint pesto in process:
For those of you who don't know what Lent is, the crash course version is that it's a period of time during which many observers of various Christian faiths give up something meaningful to them. It ends the Saturday before Easter. Common things to give up for lent include booze, chocolate, meat, swearing, and sweets. My girlfriend, who was coming with to my family's Easter celebration, had given up sweets. In the middle of the Lent period she informed me that she was really craving coconut cream pie, so I decided to surprise her with one. My buddy Josh helped me make it, and it was delicious. I will say that the custard didn't set perfectly, so I made it again a week later and it was perfect.
