So, today I decided to make a Shepherd's Pie.  Why?  Well, because I was watching Kitchen Nightmares and saw Gordon Ramsey make one from scratch, so I said, "what the heck. Why not?"Anyway, the recipe I found online called for ground lamb, which sounds delicious but I don't know the first place to go to get ground lamb.  It's not like the supermarkets around here carry it.  Believe me I checked several. While they had plenty of ground pork, beef and turkey; nada to ground lamb.  And I guess I could have substituted but both Ramsey and the online recipe I'm using said ground lamb.  And who don't want to cook like Gordon Ramsey?

Well, while I was in the supermarket, mulling over my options in the meat section, I remembered that I had a meat grinder.  No seriously, I do.  A very old - or as my hipster friends like to call vintage - steel grinder that you have to crank with your hands. It was something I found in my house years ago.  I think it belongs to one of my great-aunts or perhaps an Amish person or something.  Anyway, I decided that if I couldn't buy ground lamb, I would do the very best, next thing and grind it myself.  Sounds like a good idea, right?  Actually no.

Maayynnnee, grinding meat is no joke. Seriously my right bicep is on fire right now.  I was cranking and sweating so much that I had to stop, go upstairs and change into some workout clothes. Of course, I didn't [think to] use lean meat so the fat kept getting caught in the wheel and I had to stop every few seconds to cut it out. It was certainly a relationship with animal meat I wished not to ever partake in again. But that wasn't the worst part: so I was cranking away, trying to push the meat through the little holes when a big piece got stuck in the wheel. Normal people would have probably tried to fish it out before proceeding on.  But then again, normal people wouldn't try to grind their own meat neither. So anyway, instead of doing what normal folks would do, I decided to use all my strength - or whatever I had left - to crank the wheel around. I lean into the wheel, grunting, pushing and sweating. Then it happened. The piece of meat popped and a some lamb juice squirted out of the feeder part and right into my eyeball. I'm pretty sure I got E coli of the eye now.

Now I'm sitting here, applying and reapplying Visine, trying to do my best not to turn into a zombie monster.  Not to mention that I totally broke two nails, which I am totally pissed about. And I'm tired, which means that the Shepherd's Pie will have to wait for another day. I think I will just eat a sandwich tonight - or brains.

Oh yeah, fuck you Gordon Ramsey.