Cruise control is really nice. That’s what I’ve learnt over the past weekend of being behind the wheel again. Also, despite saying that not being able to drive in Britain means I’m coming in as a somewhat blank slate, I still managed to drive on the wrong side of the road at some point. Oops.

(thankfully, it was at least a quiet road)

As for the weekend’s main activity, well, it was mostly baking, borne out of Tammy asking the question: “Where do you get good pie in Durham?” and then deciding to make it ourselves. Below we have a modified chocolate chess pie, a mincemeat tart with homemade mincemeat (somewhat hampered by Americans not having the right ingredients available, but oh well), and an attempt at a Heston Blumenthal lemon tart. All turned out pretty well, especially the mincemeat and chess pies, which I made using a Pierre Hermé pâte sucrée recipe. The lemon filling of the Heston tart (complete with blowtorched sugar!) is wonderful, but the pastry doesn’t quite work. Next time I’ll just make it with the Hermé dough.



Interesting things going on at work, but the magic armour of NDA is applied to all of them. Though I think I’ll be explaining closures in JavaScript in the weeks to come…