So, it is party time again, folks!

[wiseheart]

Each year this time, we launch my virtual birthday party, which starts on October 1 and ends on October 9 at midnight, sharp. The goals of the party are to post as many comments and collapse as many threads as possible, on as many new pages as we can. It is always great fun, as you can see if you check out the similar entries of the last few years.

This year, I'll also throw the real party at mid-time - and post the recipes of all the food that will be there for you, so that you can all participate if you want to. Virtual food has no calories.

Fandom-related discussions are as welcome as the ones about coffee or chocolate (just to name a few favourites from previous years), and, of course, pictures and recipes of birthday cakes. ;)

So, drop by, tell your story, post your pics or silly poems, ask questions you always wanted to ask and have a good time!

Soledad, in excited expectation




Oh, and by the way, to provide birthday gifts hobbit-style, I've got a revived story and a Kansas 2 update for you.

Enjoy!

Comments

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

Basicaly, it's a cheese pastry from Lotharingia (sp?), the border area between France and Germany. The egg-sour cream-cheese sauce is the standard, you can vary the rest of the filling according to your own preferences.

If you make one large pastry, it isn't very time-consuming work, either.

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

These, too, are very easy to make. With the kids, we finished them in 45 minutes, cutting and decorating and baking and all. (Including gobbling up the whole thin.*g*)

[espresso-addict.livejournal.com]

The Silver Chair was always my favourite, but my copy seems to have gone walkabout years ago, so I haven't reread it as an adult. I'm very fond of parts of The Dawn Treader too -- the world building, the lack of battles, Reepicheep, Eustace when he isn't being annoying.

The Susan bashing is mainly in the original but there's a fair amount of Problem of Susan fic that assumes she's in the wrong and needs to be fixed (by finding Jesus & living a life of unremitting charity work) before she's ready for NarniaPrimed. I've always thought Lewis was just plain wrong about Susan, at least insofar as the Narnian universe is meant to function as an allegory for Christianity, or even a coherent fantasy universe where Aslan isn't evil. But I don't think Lewis really understood adult women, or at least wasn't interested in writing them.

[espresso-addict.livejournal.com]

We buy a lovely quiche with browned onions & onion marmalade with balsamic vinegar, plus a thick cheese topping of course.

[espresso-addict.livejournal.com]

We are awesome! Though currently icon free!

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

I read the books for the first time as an adult already. Our Master (or should it be Mistress?) of novices in the convent was a huge Narnia fan and recced the books to us - I must say, I wasn't impressed. At all. There is too much preaching, and when you've started your foray into English language and literature with Tolkien, well, Lewis is a poor substitute, IMO.
What I respect in Tolkien greatly, is that although a devout Catholic, he managed to leave religion out of Arda. Mostly, anyway.

I've re-read Narnia a few years ago, and I bought all the films; I must ruefully admit that I prefer the films. No preaching, lots of adventure. My personal favourite is The Dawn Treader, but I like the world-building parts of The Horse and His Boy, too. It was an interesting - because very different - culture, and I laughed myself silly over the constant quoting of the poets.

I must re-read them again, it seems. Personally, I liked Susan most of the Pevensie children; IMO, the younger boy, Edmund or Edward or whatever was his name, was a first grade jerk. I couldn't stand him. And, I'm sorry to say, but Reepicheep annoyed the hell out of me, too.

Wait a minute? Aslan is supposed to be evil? I always thought he was a saviour-like figure, so much that it made my teeth ache. What have I read falsely?

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

On with the Real Life Party food: Meatballs.

As the name says, these are walnut-sized little balls made of minced meat (pork or beef or a mix thereof), crumbled stale bread (or rather rools that are soaked in warm water, which is then squeezed out of them), chopped onions (we always use onion paste in these days - so much easier to find the right dosage and to blend it with the rest of ingredients) and an egg, seasoned with salt and pepper and then fried.

People usually deep-fry them, but I'd advise against it. Paradoxically, it makes them dry like sawdust and really hard. Mum always fries them in a frying pan, in a generous amount of sunflower oil, but only so much that they would be a little less than half-covered. When one side is fried, she flips them; this way they are golden brown, of a nice consistence, and hold in the fridge for at least a week.

For 500 gr minced meet we use one or one and a half rolls, depending on their size, one middle-sized egg and a teaspoon of onion paste. Don't put too much bread in the mix, or the meatballs will taste of... well, nothing.

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

I think they are as many Quiche recipes as there are families in Alsace and Lothringia (sp? What is it called in English?)

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

It seems to be a localized problem. Or perhaps depending on the journal layout? I'm currently not having any problems, let's hope it stays that way. *knocks on wood*

[espresso-addict.livejournal.com]

I read The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe when I was young enough I didn't realise it was Christian allegory (helped by having atheist parents & not studying the Bible at all until I was a teenager), and the rest as soon as my pocket money stretched.

I think Lewis is writing in a tradition of English children's lit that stretches back to the Victorian era, cosy fantasy (and non-fantasy) that's always rooted in the domestic, with a firm narrator's voice that doesn't shrink from directly addressing the reader (E. Nesbit is an obvious early example). It's not a tradition that I'm particularly fond of now, as an adult, but it dominated the older children's fic I read as a kid. It's entirely different from what Tolkien is doing in LotR, which was written for adults and draws on Norse myth rather than Victorian/Edwardian children's fantasy. (The Hobbit is more in the other tradition.)

I never much liked Susan because she's beautiful -- I've always had a problem with beautiful heroines.

Lewis's intention, afaik, is that Aslan is the Narnian incarnation of Jesus, which makes Aslan's rejection of Susan in The Last Battle utterly incomprehensible to me & many others -- hence the minority fanon that Aslan is actually evil.

[espresso-addict.livejournal.com]

Alsace Lorraine ?

[espresso-addict.livejournal.com]

It might be layout dependent. I'm getting no luck with it at all today.

[solanpolarn.livejournal.com]

Happy early birthday, wiseheart! May the next year be full of chocolate, rewarding (and appreciated) writing projects, fun trips and friends (on-line and off)!

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

Ah, I understand now. I'd really need to re-read the books. I never liked Aslan, really, he was too stupidly condescending, which means that he doesn't really have that much in common with Jesus.

I must admit that I never realized that Susan was beautiful. That part seems to have slipped my attention somehow.

And while I read The Hobbit as an adult for the first time, too, I loved it instantly. I still can't stomach Lewis's style, though.

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

Thanks! It's so good to hear from you again! Tomorrow, I'll post the recipe for the Super-Choco-Cookies I'm about to bake, just for you!

[solanpolarn.livejournal.com]

These sound delcious! I am a great fan of cheese. :-) Have you tried halloumi? I had some for dinner, with boiled rice and lightly fried sugar snap peas and peppercorn sauce. Yummy, if I do say so myself!

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

Perhaps, yeah. I only know how to call it in German and Hungarian. And perhaps in French.

[espresso-addict.livejournal.com]

Lewis's understanding of Christianity, as displayed in the Narnia series, is very different from mine, though I liked his Screwtape Letters.

I was surprised rereading Watership Down last year for my Yuletide story how much I disliked the narratorial interjections. I guess as a child I just got used to authors talking down to me. One of the reasons I loved the slightly more modern Earthsea & Diana Wynne Jones, which don't do that, at least not overtly.

[solanpolarn.livejournal.com]

I first read the Narnia books as a child, too, and I didn't spot the Christian allegory either. This is probably just helping your theory, though, because I also have atheist parents. Finding out they were meant to be Christian allegory diminshed the books for me, though I did still enjoy them when I re-read them all (in English for the first time) in my mid-twenties. I haven't really revisited them since.

Actually, what has inspired me towards re-reading them (but my list of books to read is so long it is not likely to happen any time soon) is reading Neil Gaiman's "The Problem of Susan", where he shows us a grown up, retired Susan. It is not a pleasant tale, and I am not sure I either like or fully understand it, but it does a good job of pointing out how unfair Aslan's rejection of Susan is.

[espresso-addict.livejournal.com]

Wikipedia seems to think Lorraine is the English (and French?) equivalent of the German Lothringen. Hence quiche lorraine, I suppose!

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

The Screwtape Letters is hilarious. They were given hand-to-hand in my teenage years, when religious literature wasn't easily awailable over here, and we discussed it endlessly with the Catholic youth group I belonged to. We also howled with laughter each time the topic came up.

When I was in novitiate, we had a meeting with the young people from other orders. One such group turned parts of the book into a performance - it was rather chilling, surprisingly enough.

[solanpolarn.livejournal.com]

Tomorrow, I'll post the recipe for the Super-Choco-Cookies I'm about to bake, just for you!
You temptress, you! That sounds wonderfully delicious!

It's so good to hear from you again!
I have to warn you, though, I am busier than I have ever been this start of semester: I am teaching two different modules at the same time for the first three weeks, and they are both modules I have never taught before! One of them is a 'traditional' module, where I give lectures to students in a lecture theatre, but the other is an on-line module for a new Master of Science degree programme that I am also programme coordinator for! I have never taught an on-line module before, so as well as working out what to teach and relearning the topics, I am also having to work out how to deliver the material, and how to create interactions with the students on-line. It is good fun, but a lot of work! All of that is to say: I may not have much time to hang out at the lovely party you have so graciously once again invited me to!

[solanpolarn.livejournal.com]

These sound like something Diefenbaker would love, so I will use my Diefenbaker icon. (Do you watch/have you watch Due South?)

What really prompted me to reply to this, was to ask if you make your own puff pastry. I tried it once -- a very long time ago -- and it took me ages and turned out rubbish. At the time, I don't think I could have bought puff pastry in our grocery shop (this was when I was a kid, living with my parents on a farm in very rural Sweden). Here in the UK, I find that most grocery largish grocery shops will sell you ready made, and rolled out, puff pastry, often of a few different varieties (frozend, chilled, 'light'). For awhile I made spinnach and chickpea rolls, using puff pastry, for my lunches which I really enjoyed. I should have a go at making them again, when things quieten down at work...

[solanpolarn.livejournal.com]

This sounds scrumptious! Can I have some please?

[espresso-addict.livejournal.com]

It's really interesting to hear non-Brits' take on the series; they feel so quintessentially English.

I don't know whether Gaiman invented the term 'the problem of Susan' in that story or was referencing an existing phrase. (Wikipedia seems to think he invented it, but I could swear I'd heard it used years earlier. He certainly popularised it.) Either way, it's a thought-provoking story.