Mint Sauce for The Lamb

Now, to be honest, I've never made lamb, nor have I made mint sauce for lamb. Now, as you loyal readers know, and the rest of you are reading now, my husband has been hankering for lamb. He had been hinting rather broadly the past couple of years that he wants lamb for Rosh Hashanah. I asked/blogged around for advice on recipes and general lamb cooking instructions. I finally bought a monstrous piece, smallest I could find, in Rami Levy and even managed to get it into my freezer. That's child's play compared to fitting it into my oven, which I'll tell you about in a later blog post. I have a super tiny, actually two super tiny ovens...

Well, back to the Mint Sauce... all the recipes said the lamb should be served with Mint Sauce. A friend gave me a simple recipe, just my type, no quantities.

Chop up a quantity of Mint (Nana) add a teasp. of sugar Mix some vinegar with equal quantity of water and pour on the mint and let stand.

She said I should do it a few days in advance. So, here it is:

mint, cleaned and chopped

plus sugar

water and vinegar

bottled and waiting

I hope I did it right...

No Häagen-Dazs® This Visit

This blurry* ad is the closest I got to having my favorite Häagen-Dazs® mint ice cream this visit to the states. I must admit that I ate too much of other things, but none of their delicious ice cream at all.

I had a couple of yummy desserts at other restaurants, shared with cousins. My big food craving this visit, which wasn't a fun visit, was blueberries. I bought containers of blueberries whenever I could. I noshed on them a lot. And twice I had them for lunch with some soft cheese.

Häagen-Dazs® isn't as available as it once was. There are very few places you can go in and pay a fortune for a scoop or two or more. And I didn't have the time and solitude to buy a pint to call a meal of it.  Maybe next visit...

* The blur is because of the awful window of the LIRR, not because of my camera/phone.

Non-Diet Treats

Granted that I've been keeping my weight "down," that is lower by about 15 kilo (30 pounds) than it once was, for the past seven years or so, but every once in awhile I do need a treat.

First of all there's my not so secret craving for Haagen Daz mint ice cream. I limit it to my trips to the states, generally just once a visit. I used to have no problem finding a Haagen Daz place in all sorts of malls and stations and if not that the mint ice cream was in every supermarket all over. But the last couple of times I looked for it in Arizona, I couldn't find it at all. So I began scouting around for it while still in New York. I saw that the Duane Reade near my friend had a container and began fantasizing about having an entire container for lunch before flying to AZ.  I sort of hinted the idea to my friend who knows me all too well and suggested we go to the Haagen Daz place not far from her and just buy myself a couple of scoops. 

And that's what I did. A cup with two scoops of my mint and one of the special run peppermint (not as good) cost me more than a container that had lots more (and lots more calories, too.) But I certainly do not need the calories, and my cravings were satisfied with the scoops. 

Since I had been so good about just getting scoops of ice cream, I allowed another craving to win. In the international chain Coffee Bean, all of the coffees are kosher, not just the plain ones. There are even branches with kosher foods, sandwiches etc. But the branch in the Phoenix Airport is not one of the kosher ones. But I wanted a fancy coffee, so I bought one there.

Yes, it was good! And I got it before getting on the plane to Newark which was the "stopover" before the plane to Israel.

And now that I'm home, back to the diet...

I Can't Be in America Without My Treat, Häagen-Dazs Mint

I love ice cream.  OK, not just any ice cream, thank G-d.  If wasn't so fussy, I'd be binjing on ice cream all the time and I'd weigh a lot more.  Thank G-d I'm fussy about my ice cream.  The only ice cream I can't resist is Häagen-Dazs mint, and I only buy it in the states.

During my recent visit I almost left without my "fix."  But luckily when my cousin took me shopping for the last few gifts I spied a Häagen-Dazs kiosk in the mall, so we stopped there for lunch.

Yes, that was my lunch.  I had a medium size cup of Häagen-Dazs Mint Chip with a bottle of water.  That's a michaiah...