Party time ahead!

[wiseheart]

Well, yes, dear folks, it's this time of the year again. The big, one-week virtual party from today to the 9th of October starts here. Come on in, be welcome, make yourself comfortable, and post a comment. May we have many collapsed threads again!

Last year we had 559 comments on 4 pages, which is an impressive record to break. But I have an excellent apple pie in the oven, and offer a virtual slice to every party guest.

Let's party!

Addition: someone asked for the apple pie recipe. Here it is, behind the cut.


400 gr wheat flour
200 gr butter or margarine
200 gr sugar
1/10 litre sour cream
1 pinch of salt
ground peel of 1/lemon
2 gr baking soda

For the filling:
2 kg apples
sugar,cinnamon, cardamom, vanilla and ground lemon peel as you like

One eggyolk for painting the top.

How to make it?
1) Make a dough from abovementioned ingredients.
2) Cut it in two equal pieces. Roll out one piece, lay it into a baking tin (baking paper under it is helpful).
3) Spread some dried bread crubms all over it.
4) Peel and plane (slice???) the apples, press out the juice with your hands (it shouldn't be too dry, though) and mix them with the spices.
5) Spread the apples over the dough.
6) Roll out the other half of the dough. Cover the apples with it.
7) Paint the top with eggyolk and bake it in a pre-heated oven, on 200°C for twenty minutes.
8) Cut it when it's cooled down.

Sorry, but I had to use the metric system. My brain doesn't work in cups and pounds and that stuff. I hope you can still figure out how much you need from the ingredients.



Addition: I also wish to gift upon my dear party guests a birthday-present, Hobbit-style: Chapter 03 - Puer Natus Est Nobis of my Cadfael fic "Sparrows" has just been posted to hiddenrealms and to FF.Net. Enjoy!

And the end results are: 735 comments on 6 pages! It's more than I could have dreamed of, and I thank you - all of you - who contributed to this record. It will be a hard one to break next year indeed, but I hope you'll be back. :)

Thanks again, I had a fantastic time and met great new people - it was fun!

Comments

[solanpolarn.livejournal.com]

This should be FLC-26 and if the theory is correct it should start a new page... Oh, the suspense!

[lissas-elves.livejournal.com]

You were right - a new page it is. Hooray for science! :-)

[lhun-dweller.livejournal.com]

Mac is currently "partying" with his rubber bone. No chocolate for him (Very Bad for dogs!), but perhaps someone would slip him a bit of cheese or a crust from Wiseheart's pie?

[lissas-elves.livejournal.com]

Good morning.

Doing good so far: on page 2 already and 170 comments - that's not bad.

It's a real autumn day here today: rainy, windy, leaves all over the place. In other words, a good day for staying indoors with my computer and a mug of tea. :-)

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

Which is a lovely way to spend the day, isn't it? If I've counted correctly, this ought to be comment #185, and we're on page 2 - go us! The best part is, that there are actually interesting discussions in many long threads, not just token comments to bounce up the counts!

[rcfinch.livejournal.com]

This bodes well - we've reached the second page. Unfortunately, I won't be able to make many comments today, as I'll be away the rest of the day.

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

Since we've got six more days, you don't need to worry about that. ;)

[katlinel.livejournal.com]

Oooh, is it that time of year again already? Happy birthday to you! The leaves are falling and beginning to pile up in heaps on the ground, we've made and eaten our first stew of the season, and very good it was too, I'm pulling out my winter jumpers again, and it's also the perfect time of year for pie! It's a lovely time to have a birthday and I hope that this year's is an exceptionally good one for you.

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

Thanks. :) A good year would be nice, after the last one. But as Mum says, as long as we still have our health, we can actually deal with everything.

[scifimimi.livejournal.com]

Happy Birthday! *bakes a cake*

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

Tell me how it turned out. ;)

[raspberryfool.livejournal.com]

Happy Birthday, the apple pie was lovely. Mmmmm :-)

(I was directed here by the good lady Altariel, btw).

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

Thanks! Glad you liked the apple pie. Despite what Hobbits might say, "water hot" isn't the only "noble thing" out there. Nor are mushrooms. There's always apple pie to consider.

[jen-rock.livejournal.com]

Happy pre-birthday! Oooooh, apple pie! Sounds great.

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

Have a slice!

[rcfinch.livejournal.com]

What do you do if you run out of apple pie?

[lissas-elves.livejournal.com]

Run out of apple pie?!? 0_O

*rolls a barrel of apples into Soledad's kitchen*

Disaster averted! *g*

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

We'll need more first level comments to get to the next page. We must reach 5 this year, I think that would be a reasonable agenda. So, in the spirit of development, I hereby start a new topic: tell me about your favourite book. Or about one of your favourite books.

I could name "The Hobbit" in this place, but that would be glaringly obvious, I think. So I'll name my second favourite. Strangely enough, it's a children's book as well, titled "Island-blue" (my translation), written by the excellent Hungarian writer Magda Szabó. It's about love and loss and talking animals... very, very cute. I read it at the age of 22, I think, and I bawled like a baby, despite the happy end.

[maglors-finch.livejournal.com]

The Silmarillion is also glaringly obvious, but I'm going to mention it anyway. If opera's are allowed I'd say Götterdämmerung.

But *scratches head* that's a lot of doom and gloom, and this is a birthday celebration. I may have to rethink this.

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

There's nothing wrong with a little doom and gloom, although personally, I detest Wagner. I'm not much of an opera fan as a whole. Now, Bach's pieces for the organ, or his cantatas, that's something for this girl.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Discounting The Lord of the Rings as too obvious, I'll say The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin. It's the perfect science fiction book. Or else The Far Side of Evil by Sylvia Engdahl, a YA science fiction book with a brave and smart female lead and lots of sociology. (My icon is from the cover of the recent hardback reissue.)

[solanpolarn.livejournal.com]

I voted for The Lord of the Rings in the BBC Big Read search for our favourite book. In this setting I will agree it is overly obvious, though.

[jenn-calaelen.livejournal.com]

Favourite book? That is a very hard question! :)
There are so many books I love, it makes it really hard to choose a favourite.

To name several, limiting myself to one book or series by an author:

Swallows and Amazons series by Arthur Ransome - children's books written and set in the 1930s about children camping, sailing and playing games of imagination in the Lake District. There are so many reasons why I loves these, the main on is that each of the children have their own strengths and weaknesses and these all play their part in the stories.

Lions Of Al-Rassan by Guy Gavriel Kay - historical fantasy set in a alternative version of Reconquest Spain. Very detailed and characters from all sides are shown without any feeling that there is one side that is right and the others are wrong. Individual characters are good, bad or mixed, mostly mixed and have their own motivations and values which inform their actions. It is also a book that makes me cry at the end, but without seeming too morbid.

Curse of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold - historical fantasy set in an alternative world parallel to Spain of Ferdinand and Isabella. A world where there are gods who intervene in the world, but can only work through people who let them. Twisty and very detailed.

Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott - historical novel based in England in the reign of Richard I. A nostalgia favourite, I think I was about 6 when my father first read this to me. I know there are problems with it - and I like having read it enough to know which bits I can skip. I really enjoyed the way that the reader keeps finding out more and so many of the characters aren't who they appear to be when the reader first encounters them.

Lord Of The Rings - obviously. Engrossing and such a sense of the world going on around the edges of the story with all the details of everything - history, language etc.

Interesting to see that I've picked 3 fantasy novels, 3 historical (of various types) and 1 children's book. I'm surprised as I read lots of science fiction, but thinking about it most of that is more light reading than the ones that I count as my favourites. I could list more, but I think this will do for now. :)

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

Well, at least we share two of these: Ivanhoe and LOTR. The other fantasy books you've mentioned sound interesting, too. Never heard of them before, but again, they don't import the really good stuff all that often here. :(

[solanpolarn.livejournal.com]

I was going to suggest Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome as one of my favourite (series of) books, but I see jenn_calaelen beat me to it. Hence I will go with another rather obvious book and say To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. It really is a wonderful, and positive book, showing that humans can and will rise to better themselves if we believe in them and give them a chance. When my friend K mentioned that he hadn't knowingly read many books by female authors this was my immediate recommendation. I then bought it for him for his birthday, just to make sure he got the hint! Happily he does have good taste in books and enjoyed it very much.

Edited to fix html-coding error.

[jenn-calaelen.livejournal.com]

Yay, always good to find another fan of the Swallows And Amazon series. :)

I never realised Harper Lee was female *feels ignorant* - To Kill A Mocking Bird is in my pile of books to read as my boyfriend was appalled to learn that I had never read it.

[ithilwen.livejournal.com]

Why am I leaving a comment now when it's not your birthday yet?

It's hard to go wrong with apple pie. If you're lazy like me, though, baking a single apple in a sweet dough is the way to go. Same apple goodness, a but half the prep time.

(Great - now I'm hungry for some fresh, hot apple pie! Which my hospital cafeteria doesn't have...)

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

Because it's a monster party, and it's already gone on without you for days? *g*

Plus, because we have apple pie. Even if only a virtual one.

[sharp-glance.livejournal.com]

You're still here, mortal? I'd have thought your weak, sickly frame would have failed by now. I suppose, though, that some Mortals age like shoe leather - they just get tough and dry out over time, until they finally crumble away into dust.

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

Well, I *have* lost sixteen pounds since we last saw each other, so that explains your delusional ideas about mortal aging.

I've missed exchanging insults with you, though. No other Elf has such delightfully lousy manners. Well, your uncle perhaps, but that comes with the office. Celebs are the same all over Arda. ;)

[lissas-elves.livejournal.com]

Favourite books? Hmmm.... I used to read an awful lot of books, back when I was young. Then I had kids, and later on, stuff happened. Nowadays most of my reading is on the internet.

But thinking back, there were some books which I still enjoy today. To mention a few (in no particular order):

Douglas Adams: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Orson Scott Card: Ender's Strategy

Frank Herbert: Dune

Patricia Nell Warren: The Frontrunner

John Irving: The World according to Garp

Mary Renault: The King Must Die

T H White: The Once and Future King

+ who-dunnits, tonnes tonnes of those!!! Dorothy Sayers, Margery Allingham, Dick Francis, just to mention a few of my fav authors.

And of course many, many books in my own language....

[solanpolarn.livejournal.com]

I was going to claim to have discounted The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy on the 'being to obvious' count, but then I did go for To Kill a Mockingbird so maybe I will just say it hurts to much to remember he died far too young and will never write me any more books. Yes, I believe my favourite authors write books for me; who else could they possibly be doing it for? In the same vein, I think that when they stop (for silly reasons like death or loosing their minds to Alzheimer's) they are doing to spite me. It really isn't very nice of them, is it?

Also: Oh, a fellow Dorothy Sayers fan! Fantastic! :-)

[lissas-elves.livejournal.com]

Oh wow, it sure doesn't take much to collaps a thread now! Are we perhaps approaching page 3?

[altariel.livejournal.com]

We need twenty-five top level comments for a page to be full (the collapsing threads work differently). Yours was comment 18, if I counted correctly - so, yes, very close to page 3 now!

[rcfinch.livejournal.com]

Apart from the obvious:

- Homer's Odyssey, for the last forty-odd years or so. I immediately fell for Odysseus when I read it in primary school.

- The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco. I have a thing for labyrinths and multi-interpretability.

- The Ship that Flew, by Hilda Lewis. A childrens classic I love so much that I ordered a new one immediately after it fell apart two years ago.

- The Discovery of Heaven by the Dutch author Harry Mulisch. Especially the part where they rob the Vatican.

[solanpolarn.livejournal.com]

- The Discovery of Heaven by the Dutch author Harry Mulisch. Especially the part where they rob the Vatican.

Now that sounds like great fun! Tell me more? I need more books on my to-be-read list like a fish needs a bicycle, but I crave them anyway!

[lissas-elves.livejournal.com]

Henry Fielding (Tom Jones).

Edited for garbled-up post. No more champagne for me! I wouldn't mind another slice of apple pie, though. *g*

[altariel.livejournal.com]

wiseheart asked in her original post for music suggestions - what is on our party playlist?

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Probably not Wagner, I'm guessing? :-)

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

Good gracious, no! But what about the Hungarian Dances by Brahms, if we're talking about classical music? We *are* talking about classical music, aren't we? The sort with an actual melody in it and stuff?

If we're talking about contemporary music, then I'd vote for Vangelis, even if he tends to be repetitive after a while. Or Enya. Or, to pick something completely different, Mikis Theodorakis. Greek music is great for dancing!

[solanpolarn.livejournal.com]

How about some Grieg? I like the sound, if not the sentiment, of Solveigs sang.

[solanpolarn.livejournal.com]

For those not fluent in a Scandinavian language here is an English version of Solveig's song.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

I wonder if we'll reach 400 and a third page tonight...?

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

Actually, your comment *was* #400. We're still on Page 2, though. I think I'll start a new thread.

New thread...

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

... because we need to get to Page 3. Let's try something meme-like for a change.

1. Name 3 of your most favourite fandoms.
2. Name one character of each fandom you particularly like. Tell us why.
3. Name one character of each that you don't like. Tell us why.
4. If you can, recommend a piece of fanfic to each of those fandoms.
5. Post your entry as a new comment rather than a reply, so that it would get us to Page 3 - and make it easier for the rest of us to discuss the individual entries.