Ptomaine Wednesday- E V O O edition

I've been really looking forward to making dinner tonight since I decided to try one of Rachael Ray's 30 minute meals. I have had her coo0kbook, 30 Minute Meals 2, for a couple years, but it has just been sitting in my cupboard with the rest of the cookbooks.

Over the weekend, I chose my meal. I do really like that she plans a whole meal for you. I chose:
Lamb chops with Mint and Mustard Dipping Sauce
Tomatoes stuffed with Tabouleh Salad
White Bean Salad with Thyme
Limoncello dessert

I guess I chose this meal because it would require some significant expansion of my family's dinner horizons. Also, there was a picture. Here is how Rachael's meal looked.Lamb chops seem like a special occasion meal. I knew that Spencer would be returning from a hunting trip tonight, and that seemed like cause for celebration. So I made a grocery list. I had to buy almost every ingredient- lamb chops, mint, grainy mustard, white wine vinegar, bulgur wheat, mint, thyme, ice cream, lemon sherbet, limoncello, wafer cookies, canneloni beans, raddichio and tomatoes. I even had to buy olive oil, which I ran out of a couple weeks ago.

Spencer got home at about 4, and told me straight up that he wasn't really hungry. He ate the other half of this for lunch:His buddies bought it for him as a thank-you gift for driving. Wasn't that thoughtful?
I digress. I made dinner anyway, and here is what I thought about it:

The lamb chops were the best I have ever had. Rachel's recipe called for 12 loin chops, but all that Safeway had was 8 shoulder chops, so that's what I used. I could have used four.
The mint and mustard dipping sauce is delightful. It was painful to buy mint at the store, since in the summer my back yard is teeming with it. Now I have a great recipe I can use it in. I also got to use my friend Erica's honey, which is such a pretty color, and delicious.
My husband really liked the white bean salad. What's not to like, it's just white beans with shredded raddichio and some thyme sprigs cooked in EVOO and garlic.
The tabouleh turned out good, I really like it. I bet it would have been better if the tomatoes I stuffed it with had any sort of flavor. Every tomato I looked at today in the store was pale and firm. They all looked like little hard cameo apples. Again, another dish I can make in the summer with patio tomatoes.
The Limoncello dessert called for a scoop each of vanilla ice cream and lemon sherbet andwafer cookies topped with lemon zest and a shot of limoncello. I was most excited about this recipe, because I have a fantastic zester that I've never used, and because I have never had limoncello.
I bought Caravella brand.
The booze was strong and bitter and it ruined the dessert. I guess I thought it would be a sweeter liqueur. Spencer and I both poured off about half of the limoncello. By the time the ice cream and sherbet had melted a little and mixed with the alcohol, it all tasted better. I'll try this dessert again, but I won't serve it right away.

The whole thing took about 35 minutes. I think if I did it again, I could do it in 30.