At home. With Heston Blumenthal. Cooking shrimp cocktails.

It snowed last night and although most of if was gone within a second, there was a little left on the rooftops when I looked out the window this morning. Snow makes me ridiculously happy, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed we'll get more of it soon.

Also in weekend news: Johan (of London) gave me a gorgeous cookbook for Christmas. It's by Heston Blumenthal (of Fat Duck fame), and tonight we're cooking two of his lamb recipes. I've had a gigantic leg of lamb lying in the freezer for months now after buying half a lamb from a guy at work who raises them in his spare time - how's that for local? Speaking of which, have you seen the Portlandia "Is it local" skit? Funny stuff.

On a somewhat related note, I felt I had to show you an image of Heston Blumenthal's shrimp cocktail, prepared with the precision of a watchmaker, of course. Johan (of this house) found it kind of hilarious that it's the chef's secret, guilty pleasure. But it's often like that, isn't it? Fancy chefs digging simple things like duck liver on toast or something, and then they have the rest of us break our necks cooking consommés and rillettes and the like.