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

[altariel.livejournal.com]

I was really pleased it won, one in the eye for all the literati who insisted it was rubbish!

[solanpolarn.livejournal.com]

Me too! Somebody asked me at the time (since they knew I enjoyed the Harry Potter books) whether I was disappointed that didn't win. I really wasn't and was a bit surprised that I had to explain that while Rowling's books are a good read and quite fun, they are not great literature on the scale of Tolkien, Lee and Austen.

[jenn-calaelen.livejournal.com]

It seems like too many people can't understand the difference between enjoying something and thinking that it is good. Personally for books, I think that the best of them are both, but there is always a place for fun books to read lightly and for fun, as well as a place for book that aren't much fun to read but a 'great' or something in terms literature - like the kind of books that make people think or learn. :)

[solanpolarn.livejournal.com]

Frivolous isn't a bad thing, but as you say the best books are the ones that are enjoyable to read and make us think and learn. What upsets me even more than people not realizing you might just read a book for fun is when they assume just because people enjoy reading something it isn't "good literature". There are of course books that are never going to be fun to read -- from a recent discussion with other friends Kafka springs to mind as an obvious example -- because of subject matter for example, but I always remember a bit in one of the later Dorothy Sayers books where Harriet says she tries to put in things to make people think when they aren't looking. If it is obviously there to make you learn something I think that is often bad writing.

[jenn-calaelen.livejournal.com]

It depends on the book with learning, for example if I pick up a historical novel set in a period that I know little about or a mystery set around something I don't know, I would feel disappointed if I didn't feel like I had learnt quite a bit from it. But in general, I agree. :)

Although, I also recall a book that really annoyed me, because it was a mystery that left a clue out commenting that it was too obvious to state, which I didn't manage to work out until after the end of the book.

[solanpolarn.livejournal.com]

I certainly don't object to learning things from books -- it is my preferred method of finding anything out after all. What I meant (and didn't state very clearly) is that if something is obviously in a book/text just to teach you something then that is laziness on the author's part, unless he/she is writing a text book.

[jenn-calaelen.livejournal.com]

Totally agree. Sorry I misunderstood before - possibly due to too much typing in so many conversations at the same time (but it is so much fun)! :D

[solanpolarn.livejournal.com]

I think I was being unclear, but I can certainly relate to the too much typing in too many threads at once bit as well. It is great fun, isn't it? So many people talking about so many good books so intelligently at the same time -- my favourite kind of party!

[jenn-calaelen.livejournal.com]

It is a wonderful party, and so much fun to have so many people talking about all these books. :)

[solanpolarn.livejournal.com]

It is but I must go soon; I am still at work running some experiments but they are finishing and I should get home and have some dinner...

[jenn-calaelen.livejournal.com]

Aww. I'm sure the party will still be here when you get back. ;)

[solanpolarn.livejournal.com]

It certainly seems so! :-)

[jenn-calaelen.livejournal.com]

Welcome back. :)

[jenn-calaelen.livejournal.com]

Realised that I missed replying to this in my first comment:

What upsets me even more than people not realizing you might just read a book for fun is when they assume just because people enjoy reading something it isn't "good literature".

Very true! :)

[jenn-calaelen.livejournal.com]

I was happy about that as well, especially as if I recall correctly I thought that there were too many books on the list that people thought were good rather than actually enjoyed reading (both of which I think should be taken into account).

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Yes, a sort of, "Hmm, well, I suppose I'd better vote for Ulysses, not that I got past the first ten pages..." ;-)

[jenn-calaelen.livejournal.com]

Yes.

Because people believe it when they are told that a book is great literature and if they don't like it, it is their ignorance/lack of education. (Of course, this isn't all people, just sadly too many, although enough people voted for LotR for it to win). :)

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Yes, it was great to see a book win because people loved that book. I watched a lot of BBC documentaries around the time the Big Read was on, with many critics being stuffy about things - and then an interviewer would get them to talk about what they read when they were fourteen and fifteen, and their whole demeanours would change: eyes sparkling, talking excitedly. Back when they were not self-conscious about reading. Very interesting.

[jenn-calaelen.livejournal.com]

Wow! That is very interesting. :)