Southern Boys and Lamb Chops ...

A little story from today about memories and a lamb chop ...

A Supper Time Story ...

Tonight, I cooked one of the best suppers I have had in a long time … surprisingly good lamb chops! … Garlic grilled with garlic mashed potatoes and French-cut green beans with garlic. However, before I tell you more about the meal I have a little story that will add to your appreciation of the event.

Now, I grew up in the Deep South in Georgia. Georgia is as deep and as south as you can get. If you cross over the border into Florida, you are actually going North. There are some good things about Florida but they are confined to God’s work on the weather and the Georgia people that have moved there to help out. But that’s another story.

Anyway, as a Georgia boy back in the day you didn’t get a lot of sheep to eat. So on one rare occasion my Mom decided to buy some lamb that had been mis-shipped to the local A&P over on Marietta Street. She wanted us to be exposed to some “international cuisine.” Okra is from Africa but was by then too Georgia-fied to be international or cuisine. She didn’t exactly know what to do with it so she floured it up and chicken-fried it like a pork chop. There is no rule in the Old Testament about cooking more religiously followed by a Southern lady than you have to cook pork until it and all the little creepy-crawlies inside the pork are dead. Mom did just that; that lamb and everything in it was dead and cooked "twice over."

The house smelled a little like a wet dog that mysteriously caught on fire. The lamb tasted like Mom had plated some singed fur as the flaming dog ran by. It was awful. I think that was somewhere around 1955 or 56 and I had not had sheep outside of some great Greek or Italian restaurant since that time. Even then, I made damn sure that they did not offer chicken-fried mutton on their menu out of fear of that smell.

However, today was different. A sweetheart who is always “paying it forward” had given me several cuts of lamb from the family pet that they had beheaded in an Idaho ritual. The ritual I refer to is where you raise the little lamb, fool it into thinking it’s a member of the family, whack it and then cut it up into small packages of goodness … and chops! Wonderful chops I found out!

I knew I was not going to fry my chops. Been there! I soaked them for two days in an orange juice marinade with garlic, onion powder, Tony Chachere’s Original Creole Seasoning, pepper, thyme and a liberal splash of Crystal Hot Sauce. Now, every Southern man is taught to cook and do ‘bout everything for himself but sew. I am a pretty good cook. I know my way around a grill but I have no idea where the credit goes for the deliciousness that followed. Was it the magic of the orange juice from Florida; the labor of love that Tony put in his seasoning; or the blazing hot grill that eradicated the last wet-dog smell tucked away in some dark crevice? I don’t know but it was great and the movie the “Silence of the Lambs” is not so creepy anymore. I may have it again with some onion rings and hushpuppies ...

And so it goes …