What cultures do not do a good job of cooking lamb? (That have access to it.)  Lamb is easy to cook compared to goat and I remember having a tasty goat satay in Jakarta and a great BBQ 0f goat and rattlesnake prepared by some Cajun rig hands in east Texas.

The British.

I've had some great roast lamb and "mushy peas" in the UK.    Perhaps I've just been lucky.

You're not just lucky. When my wife & I spent a couple of weeks in England we had some great lamb dishes. Shepherds pie, meat pies and scallops with ale braised breast of lamb  come to mind right off hand.

It's hard to do a bad job of cooking lamb, mutton takes some skill though. BBQ goat is excellent, it picks up the flavor of the smoke better than any meat I've tried BBQed or smoked.

I'm from a family of indeterminate lineage, Heinz 57 our us. Only one language though, we speak enough American English to get by. 

Frosty The Lucky.

I did a lot of fish and chips when I was in the UK; the best was from a takeaway in Hay on Wye; followed up by sheep's milk ice cream from another small takeaway.  This was during my wife's trip to Wales.  I was the "hewer of water and carrier of wood". 

Oh ya fish & chips and bangers & beans over toast.

In 2007 Martha and I were in Chinle, AZ on the Navaho Reservation visiting Canyon de Chelly.  WE had dinner in a local restaurant and had mutton stew and fry bread.  Martha proposed that we stay in Chinle until we had eaten all the mutton stew in town.  Unfortunately, not an achievable goal but a worthy aspiration.

"By hammer and hand all arts do stand."

I'm going to have to put Chinle on the tour list for Deb and I. I love those formations and haven't been since: Bryce, Zion and Arches parks with the folks on vacations.

We'll have to check if the RV will fit the roads and if there's room to camp. I don't know about eating the reservation out of mutton stew but I'm up for a bowl or two. 

Frosty The Lucky.

According to family lore, I took my first steps in Canyon de Chelly. 

Frosty, where we ate was the Junction Restaurant which is at 100 E. Indian Rt. 102 and is part of the Chinle Best Western.  If you go get in the back dining room and look at the pictures of the WW2 Navajo Code Talkers on the walls.

Canyon de Chelly is something of an odd place for a National Monument.  It is a series of branching canyons with steep/vertical walls and flat, alluvial floors with impressive Anasazi ruins.  You can visit them by either taking a tour vehicle (usually old, converted 2 1/2 ton trucks) or, if you have a 4 wheel drive vehicle you can drive that but you have to have a Navajo guide with you.

The lady we had as a guide had grown up in the canyon and was very knowledgeable.  She would tell us about the ruins or the petroglyph panels but would not approach them herself because or religious reasons.

At one stop way in the upper part of the canyon locals had set up booths selling jewelry and the like.  One girl had a table selling Girl Scout cookies.  That, folks, is really, really deep market penetration.

There are several campgrounds in Chinle or near the mouth of the canyons.

"By hammer and hand all arts do stand."

That sounds like my kind of place, geology, Anasazi ruins, a culture I'm not very familiar with AND good food.

If we eat there and I see the pictures of the Code Talkers I'll pay my respects. They were responsible for saving more lives than almost any other group. I wonder how many enemy code breakers ended up wearing straight jackets taking happy pills.

I don't know about riding in the back of a deuce and a half though, have to take a look at the seats first. I'll bet we can find someone to give us a tour without having to bring our own 4x4. 

Girl Scout cookies are universal you can get them in any town or village I've been in here and I used to get around a lot. S'Moas, mmmmmmm!

Thanks, I'm liking Chinle more all the time. 

Frosty The Lucky.

When I was at Bell Labs we had a talk by a surviving code talker.  They used a two level code; the first level was Navaho; the second level was they made up what various military things were called; so even if you spoke Navaho you still wouldn't know exactly what was being said.  Turns out that there was a  lack of Navaho speaking Japanese at that time. (I know of one; but he married into the tribe and lived out here before during and after the war. Grandfather to one of my friends.)

I watched an interview with a few code talkers some time back and they spoke code in Navajo IIRC they'd chat a little before getting down to business where they exchanged the page or # of the code they were going to use. That was in a private code. 

Frosty The Lucky.

WOW that pattern. That is amazing. Great work.

FL: Thank you...it took me a while to get that pattern worked out and to get a piece that long but this one worked out pretty well..

JPH

Got a publication date nailed down yet?

Thomas: I am finishing up the Japanese section as well as the crucible sections and the grip section..I am also starting the photography and line drawings... work progresses..hopefully this spring..

While the blade came out rather nice//what I am most pleased with is the grip.. I was a bit concerned about the amount of heat that was needed to melt the copal,  going from the information I could glean from Roman texts, it did work but the texts really didn't say much about the amount of heat it took..all it said was heated over coals...but it did come out pretty snazzy...

JPH

Yes the old texts are like that; I enjoy reading the "disposable apprentice methods" to my shop minions---like XXXXXXXX; hmmm not even going to explain that in public---stupidly dangerous!

I'll start saving my change to buy a copy when it comes out.

Thomas, your minions appreciate your consideration. We are glad that you tell us about it before we try it.... We have no desire to be the "Expendable Minion."

 

Thom - A minion trying to stay alive and learn more from Thomas.

 

PS. I am also saving change to buy a copy. 

 

SHHHHH Thom, don't interrupt when I'm trying to snow the public....