Week 7: Culinary Genius
The title of this weeknote refers to me. Yes, I’m the culinary genius, because on Tuesday I added a dash of truffle oil to my Heinz cream of mushroom soup and it really lifted the dish. I’ve never thought of myself as the kind of person who owns truffle oil, but I bought the tiny bottle a few months ago on a whim – I really was craving La Tua’s black truffle and ricotta tortelloni in the first lockdown.
We’ve been making Christmas gin to give to some of our family as gifts. It’s essentially mulled gin, we just left a bunch of spices in it to infuse. The thing is it’s really starting to taste like Jägermeister, so much so that aside from slight juniper undertones I’m not sure if I could tell the difference. I need to remember to save some for Arjun to try.
Wow what a week at work, I felt extremely reactive – didn’t finish most of the things I planned to, but ended up super busy with things that needed doing quickly. Sometimes weeks are like that, I was stressed but mostly in the energising “I can cope with this” way. I think it was easier to deal with knowing that after 11th December I was finished for Christmas! I didn’t use up enough holiday in the year and I’m really enjoying the prospect of a long break. This will be the longest break from work I’ve taken in ~13 years as an engineer 😳
I just got massively side-tracked by trying to find out when the 13.7 year anniversary of me being a professional engineer will be. It’s 19th September 2021, I’ll pop it in my calendar.
I had to find out my very first start date. I went down a LinkedIn hole to find it, I haven’t been on there in a very long time so I spent a while updating things and accepting connections from people who I haven’t worked with for years.
Then I dug out my original offer letter and found the date there. Fun fact: my first salary as a “Web Developer” was £14,000/year, which I remember being a so much money to me at the time but for a 19-year-old me it was just above minimum wage 🤔
I’ve lost one and a half stone since lockdown began. That’s over a really long time because I’m trying to be healthy about it, but I’m quite pleased with myself tbh (I love food and I don’t love exercise). I don’t really notice normally, except I put on some smart trousers for the first time the other day and they just fall down now.
We finally went to The Cinnamon Club for Charlotte’s 30th birthday. We kept having to push it back because of rules changes, but decided to try and go before Christmas. It was really delicious (we went for the tasting menu) and it was so nice to do something that wasn’t sitting in the house or being outside in the rain! Although we were safe and within the rules, I do still feel a bit nervous/guilty about doing things indoors.
Until next time! (I imagine my next few weeknotes will involve me lounging around in my pyjamas eating Christmas chocolate)