Twenty cloves of garlic

It's quite a primal thing, roasting a leg of lamb. 

Creating the perfect roast to share with friends is a work of many hours. The shopping, the marinading, the stabbing, the cooking. It all takes time.

But the very best way to roast a leg of lamb involved 20 cloves of garlic, a sharp, small knife, and a lack of squeamishness. 

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1 whole leg of lamb

half a jar of honey

20 peeled garlic cloves

salt

olive oil

Take the lamb out of fridge about half an hour before it needs to be in the oven. 

Make a paste out of half the garlic cloves and two thirds of the honey, a good glug of oil and a couple of tablespoons of salt. 

Allow this mix to steep whilst stabbing about twenty incisions all over the leg of lamb. Cut the remaining cloves in half and insert in incisions. 

With your hands, massage the garlic/honey/oil/salt mix into the leg, and leave it coated thickly over the top. Drizzle remaining honey over the roast as it cooks.

Bake for about two hours at 170 c. Serve with mash and vegies.

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This leaves the house enveloped in a fug of garlic,  greeting visitors before they've even walked through the door. Last night's lamb roast was a huge success, and a two kilo leg fed four adults and five kids with leftovers for today. 

Our visitors were new friends from across the street. They have three children, all similar ages to our own kids, and it was so nice to sit, and drink great wine, eat delicious food, and talk about schools and renovating and daycare and all the things that only interest the parents of children who are similar ages. 

I find I've forgotten so much about the early years of very little babies. My best friend asks me intricate questions regarding the feeding and care of four month old babies, and it's gone. I have no idea when to feed a child milk from a cup. 

Once, it was front and centre, filling my waking moments. But now, I feel I have bigger fish to fry. Such as screwing down my own mortification as I make my 6 year old return the pen he stole from his after school care teacher. 

I just hope it's a lesson he's learnt , or a stage he's going through (he seems to go through a lot of 'stages') and not early onset kleptomania.