j4 | Party lines

No, not politics again. On Saturday

sion_a and I had a party. Thank you to all the people who came; I'm not going to namecheck everybody because I'll just miss somebody and cause offence, but I will note that it was good to meet

compilerbitch and

doseybat. Also lovely to see

hairyears, who I don't see often enough, and who came bearing not only chocolate and champagne (!) but also A BADGER. :-)

Sartorial highlights of the evening included

hoiho's gold frock coat, for which the word "resplendent" may have actually been invented;

sion_a's pinstriped skirt-and-corset ensemble; and

addedentry's purple feather boa. Glowsticks and nailvarnish were also sighted here and there; and I think my corset and PVC batwings were appreciated. Why, yes, I do like my parties to end up looking like some kind of goth cabaret, why do you ask?

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Of course, underneath all the glitter I'm a big comfy old earth mother, really, so I'd spent most of the day baking, managing to throw together a surprisingly successful ginger version of my infamous fruitcaaaake, and an even-more-surprisingly successful pumpkin pie based on my mum's half-remembered recipe. I'd made biscuits already on Friday night, and on Saturday I iced them with silly Hallowe'en-themed pictures, including an Eye of Horus (which proved serendipitously appropriate when

lnr arrived dressed as Death from Sandman). Somewhere inbetween the cake-making and biscuit-icing I even managed to make soda bread for lunch.

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Notes:

- People didn't seem to believe me when I mentioned the amazing multivocality of badgers, but it was all true.
- Apologies to anybody I may have offended with references to a Sinfest cartoon.
- Here's the pumpkin pie recipe:

Ingredients:

Pie crust
1.5 cups pumpkin
2 eggs
6 oz brown sugar
0.5 teaspoon ginger
juice and grated peel of 1 lemon
0.5 teaspoon cinnamon
vanilla
0.5 pint milk
0.5 pint cream

Method:
Prick the pie crust and bake for 10 minutes. Cut the pumpkin in half and
remove the seeds, bake in a moderate oven until tender. Remove the flesh
and sieve it. Mix it with the egg yolks, brown sugar, milk and flavourings.
Whisk the egg whites and fold them into the pumpkin mixture. Bake in a hot
oven for 15 minutes and more slowly for another 35 mintes.

[I only used a few spoonfuls of cream (and no milk) and that seemed to work fine; mind you, I wasn't really sure how much a 'cup' of pumpkin was, so we just guessed most of the quantities based on the size of the pie-crust. Anyway, the topping came out like a thick fluffy-ish mousse, which was more or less what I remembered from when my mum used to make this when I was tiny. And I made the pastry without any recipe, and it came out tasting like pastry!]