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Yay rain! Rain! And lightning! When the storm started last night, I turned off and then unplugged the computers, then had a candlelit bath so that I could watch the lightning through the (small) window. And read at the same time. Then when the bath had finished having its way with me, I got dressed and sat with Bastard in the loungeroom (with the lights out) watching taped movie-type thingy and the lightning. It was still intermittently flashing when I finally went to bed after midnight.

Today's 24 Hour Rainfall Map shows decent rainfall - between 11 and 20mm at most of the metropolitan Adelaide stations. Please note that last night's rain probably won't have brought November's rainfall levels up to the statistical average. If this rain had occurred last month it might have brought October's levels up to half of average.

(no subject)

I'd like to heartily recommend what I think are Dutch Cream potatoes, for their shape-holding qualities. They'd been in the fridge for at least a couple of months, large, smooth, creamy, easily-peeled,  medium-dark beige potatoes. I made myself some soup-like stuff with the tops of the leeks I dug up from the garden this morning, the old garlic, some chicken stock, and the last of the bacon chunk (Barossa Fine Foods in the Central Markets sells their offcuts for $4.99/kg, every so often they'll have chunks of bacon which I am quite happy to take off their hands, especially Federation bacon ($17.99/kg sliced) - one chunk will do me a couple of weeks of cooking for two - I used about a third of the chunk today in the largest non-preserving pot we have), and I added three chopped potatoes two hours worth of cooking ago. The liquid has thickened, but the potatoes are still recognisably chunks. It's more a sloppy stew than a soup at the moment.

This afternoon I plan to bottle the leek stalks - it'll be an experiment, as the only preserving recipes I've been able to find which use leeks are Leek Compote and as an ingredient in a dill crock. I want to use them whole (the majority are as thick as my fingers), so the compote is out, and the dill crock recipe tells you nothing about how long the jar will keep. The leeks are currently in salted water until I decide what to use.

Other tasks for this afternoon include digging up and bottling the beetroot which I planted purely so that I could give Dad a jar for Christmas. I'm not really a fan, myself, but Papa will appreciate it, because he likes beetroot, and he can see the effort I'd take. I haven't had both time and energy since they matured, so I don't know how it'll turn out - some of them, at least, will be fibrously old.