We've had a little bit of rain in Canberra lately. A fairly wet end of Summer.
(Our backyard, where the chooks used to live. Luckily we foresaw this and moved them while they were only damp, not sodden.)
My mother's basement didn't fare so well.
All of this was ok (well, I wasn't the one with a flooded basement) until the rain began affecting FAIRMAGEDDON!. You see, we'd had a busy couple of days last weekend ripping up carpet and building a bunk bed, so we decided to skip the Canberra Show. Never mind, says I, there are lots of shows in March. Why, next weekend alone there's 3 events that I want to go to.
And then it rained. And rained. And rained and rained and rained and rained and rained and rained. (You get the picture).
And then:
It's the Crookwell Potato Festival I'm most upset about. It sounds like it just walked off the set of Gilmore Girls. I was going to go and revel in all things potato. Eat potatoes! Dig potatoes! Throw potatoes! Potato prints! Potato sack races! It was going to be a glorious, spudtastic celebration of everyone's favourite tuber.
But, that rain. By this time Canberra was starting to feel limp. Grey and drizzly and soggy. It felt like perhaps it would never stop raining - that this was just the way it was from now. So I decided to embrace the weather and cook something for dinner that longed for rain and damp as a backdrop.
An oxtail stew with bright spinach dumplings, cooked in lovely English ale, courtesy of Jamie Oliver. It seems that all of Canberra had the same idea, because I couldn't find oxtail anywhere today. I settled for osso bucco, and started chopping. The brightness in my kitchen was a nice antidote to the washed out world outside.
So now the stew has been bubbling away for a few hours, filling the house with all kinds of depth of winter, comfort food aromas. And outside?
Well played, Canberra.
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