Use it or lose it

I think hosting big holiday dinners is like flexing a muscle. If you're doing pushups regularly, it's no big deal to knock out ten pushups. But if you've been sitting on the couch doing Nonograms (for instance), it feels harder to do ten pushups.

When I was prepping for Thanksgiving, our first big holiday meal since the pandemic began, I was like, "Whoa, my big-holiday-meal muscle is rusty." I am not sure the situation has improved in the intervening four or five months.

In my fridge there is a lamb shoulder. Elwood tells me it is a nine-pound lamb shoulder, but the internet tells me that lamb shoulders are more likely to be 2 pounds, or possibly 4, or maybe 6 if you have a truly exceptional lamb shoulder. I am wondering what happened there. Is it, like, a mislabeled cow shoulder? (What do you even call cow shoulder? We must eat it, right, but it has some other name? The first time we bought a quarter-cow it came with a cut called "arm roasts," which I had never seen and do not recommend. Are those cow shoulders?) Nine pounds would even be big for a cow shoulder, I'm thinking. Maybe it's a maiasaura shoulder that got shuffled up to the front as the butcher was cleaning out the stuff that had been in the freezer for a long time. Like, a loooong time.

Anyway. In the morning I suppose I will brown this steroidal lamb shoulder along with some flavorsome veggies, and braise it until it is done. I can shoehorn it in the Instant Pot somehow, can I not? Then I will recruit a bunch of sous-chefs to cut up a bunch of pans of other veggies, and we will roast them until they are brown and tender. I have five pounds of potatoes awaiting their destiny, but I am not exactly sure what that destiny is. Maybe the easiest thing is just to roast them too, do you figure?

Before the pandemic I felt more optimism about sailing into holiday meal prep. Dinner for a dozen seems more onerous these days. Guess I'd better do it more often.

I hope you are having a glorious Easter weekend. The Vigil was lovely (aside from the part where my hair caught fire briefly); Marie's guest seems to be rolling with the weird level without too much difficulty. Tomorrow will probably go more smoothly if I hie myself to bed promptly tonight.