Today we baked a dessert, French profiteroles. It was a wonderful success.

Interestingly, it turns out that the recipe for profiteroles is very similar to my favorite Dutch gebakje: the moorkop. The difference is the filling; instead of ice cream a moorkop is filled with whipped cream.

We tried both versions -- the French profiteroles with vanilla ice cream, and a small moorkop. The bakery in Middenmeer serves moorkoppen with a piece of pineapple on top.

It's a neat idea that we can bake our own pastries, even a good old moorkop.

Today is a beautiful day; the sun is shining and it well in the 80's. I'm working, but I'm doing something I really enjoy: small bug fixes.

I don't have much time during the week for coding and my job doesn't really require any coding. But, I enjoy it and where possible I'll sneak in some small fixes or tiny features. I've learned over the years to only take on non-critical features and bugs since I can't commit much of my time. I find that doing some coding every now and then makes me a better engineering manager and it keeps me rooted in software development.

So today I'm doing small stuff: input validation, improving our 'diagnostics' page, updating the on-line help etc. I'll wrap up in an hour or so and when it is a little bit cooler I'll go for a run.

Yesterday was a perfect start of the three day Memorial weekend. In the afternoon we went to Wilmington, where we enjoyed the board walk at the river. A real summer feeling with live music outside and lots of people on the streets downtown. The weather was gorgeous.

We had dinner in Caprice Bistro, which was excellent. Great French food, with a Belgian touch. The pate was a highlight. Wilmington is about 2 hours and 15 minutes from Durham, so we were home around midnight.

I'm in Umstead this morning.

I'm helping out with the Inside-Out half marathon/10k, a race organized by NCRC. My role is to make clear where the turning point for the 10k is at a beautiful spot at the Airport Overlook.

Earlier in the week I caught some sort of virus and while it's a lot better now, running these few miles was still tough.

I got nostalgic for a dish that I haven't had for a long time, a slavink.

A slavink is a meat patty wrapped in a thin layer of bacon, based on a Dutch recipe. We used to eat them frequently in Holland. The are sold pre-made in most butcher stores and supermarkets, and I had never made them by hand before but I found a good recipe online.

The author of that (great) recipe presumably lived in the US for a long time, since he writes: "We eat them here with vegetables and potatoes but they are also good cooked on the BBQ and served on buns with ketcup and mustard."

The patty is made of a mixture of ground pork and group beef, with seasonings. I'm pretty sure that the (breakfast) bacon that I used is a bit different than the ontbijtspek you'd use in the Netherlands, but I found a brand that wasn't smoke flavored so the end result was pretty authentic. We had a great meal, with some rice and a green salad, and I made some extra that I'm keeping in the freezer for busy days.

Well, the mystery is getting closer to a solution -- the unknown plant has its first flower. And indeed, it looks like a pepper or paprika plant like many readers suggested two months ago.

Perhaps I should start placing it on the balcony, for some direct sunlight. At the other hand, it's doing quite well in the study room.

A coworker drove us to lunch today in his hobby project, a Jeep.

Without doors, that was fun.