Dreaming of Italy

Today was a bit of a washout in more ways than one. Remember I was late - as in really late - going to bed last night? I found it impossible to waken up this morning. Sat up, drank my tea, lay down again and promptly fell asleep. When I did get up, I remembered I'd to make bread for lunch, and I'm still not sure I put all the ingredients in. Great texture and rise, but did I remember the sugar? or, more importantly, the salt? (It tasted ok, but I'm still not convinced.) I got dressed just in time to make coffee for elevenses. 

Meanwhile the weather was turning crazy. The sky through my kitchen window went from purple (with a sunny foreground - very sinister) to grey and pouring, to broken cloud through the rain, to blue, with the sun returning. This sort of went on until the rain set in properly and the cloud became solid. Meanwhile I was doing Italian and feeling increasingly more grumpy, and then the bread machine beeped and we were able to eat some lunch.

In the afternoon we had a bit of an adventure. We went out much later than we should have - in fact, we should just have stayed put - and drove through the rising wind and rain to Glen Massan, where we reckoned on finding some shelter from the now gale-force gusts. We didn't walk all the way up the glen, because it seemed to be growing dark all of a sudden, and we were halfway down when there was a massive crack came from the hills behind us and then the storm was upon us. By this time we were under tall trees which seemed just ready to be blown down on top of us, and it was so black that we couldn't see the road at all. I had a mental image of my eyes, pupils dilated and staring in an effort to see the odd gleam of water warning of a possible puddle to fall into. By the time we got back to the car the rain had turned to hail and then sleet and we were half-drowned.

Funny thing is, I felt quite cheerful. 

Blipping, utterly randomly, a photo of one of my standby cook books, given to me by Himself in the first winter of our marriage. It's open at one of my favourite vegetable recipes, for zucchini in agrodolce, and you can see that it's been well-loved. I need to go back to Italy ...