Week 28: Pancakes

  • We had pancakes on Shrove Tuesday. L makes excellent thin ones. The boys had Nutella on theirs, but I insisted on drowning mine in lemon juice with a thick crust of caster sugar. It’s only once a year after all.
  • For World Book Day this week the boys dressed up as Robin Hood and Incy Wincy Spider (not Spider-Man, like half his class). L did all the hard work, including sewing on stuffed black legs to a top for C who loved it.
  • Eldest son has discovered Minecraft. I worked out how to set the app to Creative mode rather than the default Survival. Creative disables the zombies which had put him off when trying it previously. He just loves to build and has been making houses for L and me. It’s very sweet.
  • Last week Ocado mistakenly delivered us a big sirloin steak. Very kind of them. I wanted to try something different and decided to make crispy chilli beef from a recipe I half remembered. I thinly sliced the steak, coated it in egg and cornflour and then fried it until crispy. Next I fried onion, red pepper, carrots, garlic and ginger in a wok. For the sticky sauce I added soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, ketchup, honey and sweet chilli sauce. Topped with chilli, spring onion and black sesame seeds. Impressed myself.
  • This week I held kick-offs for my two new direct reports. They are both engineering managers leading three teams between them. I took the opportunity to use my expectations-setting kick-off document to help start the relationships. Off to a good start.
  • I saw that @ramannoodlez had started an Engineering Managers community on Twitter. I joined, introduced myself and had my first conversation about the jump to Engineering Director (needs membership to read fully).