Yes, I cooked lamb on Easter…
I received several responses to the email I sent yesterday. (Find it at https://briandoleary.com/you-cant-optimize-sauce/)
“Didn’t know you were such a chef!”
I’m not, but I try.
“Oooh! Did this have anything to do with your Easter lamb you were talking about?”
Indeed, it did!
“Dreaming about that signature O’Leary leg of lamb. How did you do it this year?”
First, I marinated it in a yogurt base, then I took extra special care not to make perfect the enemy of the good.
And my favorite: “Don’t care…”
I also didn’t care much about this notion (relating sauce to life) before. Never much considered it, really, until I was washing my lunch dishes after making a “family-sized” Taco Bell Crunchwrap knock-off with my Easter dinner leftovers.
I sat there washing a lot of goodness down the sink. Stuff I had spent a lot of time and energy making. Way more than was probably reasonable.
But you know what? That crunchwrap, though nothing like what the wizards at Taco Bell could assemble, was really friggin’ good!
I chopped up slices from my yogurt-marinated leg of lamb, drizzled it with my proprietary sweet mint sauce, used some shredded cheese and leftover beans, slathered all of it in (store-bought) labneh tzatziki, put some flat, crispy tostada shells over it, and did my best to fold all the tortillas into something a Taco Bell connoisseur may appreciate.
The execution was a bit off. Naturally, since I still haven’t mastered the rolling of a burrito, so…
Yet a bunch of the sauce spilled onto my plate as I ate. I tried scooping up as much as I could, but there was still a lot left behind. And I washed a bunch more down the sink.
[Insert sad emoji]
Not an optimized usage of the sauce. But I didn’t care.
I figured it was a lot like life… and it is.
Book time here to break it down:
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