Thursday, May 29

Water, Water Everywhere

I've been thinking a lot about water recently. You might be wondering why. Have you seen the weather on the Eastern seaboard this year?

First we had weeks of snow and ice and hail and sleet. That was topped off by a blizzard. Now, the April showers that are supposed to bring May flowers have just given birth to baby showers instead, which the heavens have happily rained down upon us. In central Maryland, it has rained every day – every day – since April 28.

Last year you couldn't wash your car or water your lawn because reservoirs were dangerously low. This year, you'd like to wash your car or mow your lawn, but you can't because it rains all the cotton-pickin' time.

All this constant water has an effect. It makes people grumpy and discontented. Everyone talks about going to Florida or Mexico or Los Angeles. Can you wear cute new summer sandals? No. Can you sit outside and read a book? Not unless you're in a rowboat. Want to go to an Orioles game? Oops, out of luck unless you have a rain slicker, an umbrella, galoshes and infinite patience for rain delays.

Usually, if you think of water in the summertime it conjures up good things. You can make icy cold lemonade with water, or maybe some delicious sun tea. You can swim in it, water-ski in it, shower in it after you've spent the day in the garden pulling weeds. Water is what makes the beach so beachy, and (in its frozen form) what makes snowballs so delightful.

Instead, last weekend water rained out the unofficial start of summer. The sun came out for Memorial Day, all right. It got sunny at five o'clock in the afternoon on Monday. Wow! How exciting! I bet everyone who went down the ocean was so thrilled to see the sun as they traveled homeward and got stuck in mile-long backups on the Bay Bridge!

Oh well. You can't do much about the weather, except complain (note: I am very very very good at complaining about the weather, amongst many other things. I might not be any kind of athlete, but I am a champion complainer. I think it might be genetic.) Once you get tired of complaining, what else is there to do?

Well, you could spend some time getting to know your Snoopy snowball machine, or your blender. You could make sun tea indoors, as, contrary to popular belief, it's not actually the SUN that makes the tea. The sun speeds up the process, but quite frankly you could put the jug in the fridge and eventually you would have tasty tea with no direct heat. You could make a delicious sopa de ajo – garlic soup – with a stockpot of water and some garlic and onion.

Or, you could do as the Italians do and use some water as a base for an espresso granita. Granita has many virtues: it is fat free, easy to make, and requires no special equipment. You can make it in a billion flavors. Your friends will think you are quite sophisticated. And you can eat while watching an Italian film — say, "Cinema Paradiso" or even, if you don't feel up to subtitles, "Stealing Beauty" — and feel a million miles away from the rainy dreariness outside your window. After all, summer will arrive sooner or later. It always does.