Lamb Shanks with Beans

The bad news is, I didn't make this properly. The good news is, it still turned out. Straight off I was deviating because lamb shanks are expensive and I don't want to drop a bundle on something I'm not even eating -yes I'm selfish, so what. Loin chops were half the price of the shanks so that's what I went with. Secondly, I didn't pre-read the recipe. This is a mistake I continually make, but don't really care that I make, and so will continue making this mistake until something truly terrible happens. Don't ask me what that could be, but I'm sure one day this little habit of mine will blow up in my face. Then there is, again, the problem of finding red currant jelly. You know, if I really wanted to, I'm sure I could get my hands on it somewhere, but again I don't care enough. Apparently I'm a very apathetic person. So there are the mistakes I made even before I had started to make this. Now let's get to the actual meal preparation. I came home and wanted to slug this one out because I'm one of those terrible people that loves a train wreck and I am totally loving Charlie Sheen's current antics. I love how he is going balls out and saying he's a superstar crack smoker who has tiger blood and therefore cannot O.D. . This is pure gold in my opinion. So with TMZ coming up to broadcast time I needed to be done this for what was sure to be 30 minutes of non-stop hilarity. I pull out all the ingredients and upon reading step #1 realize that the meat was supposed to marinate at a minimum overnight but even up to 2 days. "Does this matter to you?" I asked myself and I quickly realized, no, it doesn't mean a damn thing to me. I decided that 4 minutes would be plenty of "marinating" time. So that is what I did. Put the lamb, wine, black currant jelly, garlic, onions, rosemary all in a bowl and turned my attention elsewhere. 4 minutes later I dumped this concoction into a oven safe dish and realized I hadn't added any oil. So I got out the olive oil and drizzled some over pretty half assed. No measuring, nuthin' get threw some in. Then I realized I had a new dilemma. Nigella says to roast this for 90 minutes - which I new was not right for me and my loin chops. So how long was I to cook these??? Personally I had no idea. So, genius that I am, I pulled out my cooking meat for dummies thermometer and set it to medium rare lamb, stuck it in the meat and closed the oven door. Then I started working on the beans. Here I became confused because the bean directions weren't involving the Worcestershire sauce that was staring me in the face on the counter saying " hey buddy, you still haven't used me". So I went back to step #1 and started reading again...Oh, that was supposed to be in the meat "marinade" that is now in the oven with the meat. Huh. So, I quickly decide the proper course of action here is just to open the oven door and toss the 2 tbsp of Worcestershire into the pan, it's only been a few minutes, what's it matter really? I'm thinking. Apathy all over the place here.

So, finally I have the meat all done and I'm free to fully prepare the beans. Which really is just warming them with mustard and garlicy oil on the stove top. It really didn't take very long at all and the lamb was finished, at which point I decided the beans were done too. Then it was just a matter of dumping the beans in with the now cooked lamb and marinade. Conveniently this was when Husband rolled in from along day at work so I looked like super wife having dinner timed perfectly. Husband at the lamb, I ate just the beans. We both really liked our meals despite that fact that this was prepared entirely willy-nilly. So, if I can turn this horror show into a delicious meal then I'm sure you can make this work too. And JFYI - TMZ was a huge letdown. Not even a Sheen anthem which I was sure there would be.