nonajf

( It's not too loud in here for you, is it? )

Hi everyone!

Because so many people are in transit this weekend and we're still putting together our posting schedule, we're going to delay posting until the evening of Dec 1. Sorry for any inconveniences! We can't wait to get things started, and hope you all enjoy the fest!

Best,
Snarry Holidays mods

Title: The Appeal of Books
Author: alisanne
Word Count: 100
Rating: PG
Challenge: Written for snarry100's prompt #190: Flourish and Blotts
Warning(s): None that I am aware of.
A/N: Books can be quite arousing.
Beta: sevfan
Disclaimer: The characters contained herein are not mine. No money is being made from this fiction, which is presented for entertainment purposes only.

The Appeal of Books

Happy birthday, Alfonso Cuarón!

• Actors and Movies: Video: Dan Radcliffe & Rupert Grint talk illnesses and schedules for Deathly Hallows
  
  Exclusive Clip from HP Ultimate DVDs
  
  Video: Evanna Lynch promotes Half-Blood Prince DVD & talks Deathly Hallows filming
  
  New Matthew Lewis 2009 photo shoot & Twitter images
  
  Tom Felton talks Deathly Hallows filming with Voldemort in Mizz magazine
  
  Two new Dan Radcliffe One Day in the Life of book photos
  
  Tom Felton talks technology & online chess with Harry Potter cast
  
  Video: James & Oliver Phelps talk Deathly Hallows filming on GMTV
  
  Potter cast to attend London Half-Blood Prince Blu-ray signing event
  
  Natalia Tena & Josh Herdman attend Collectormania Copenhagen


• Archive: Moonshadow, the Snape/Lupin archive, has been updated.


• Essay: randomneses has posted a brief follow-up to "In Defense of Lily Evans".


• Searches: daily_snitch is looking for fanworks and resources featuring Helga Hufflepuff.

Send your fandom news to Daily Snitch!

Holiday Drawbles Drive: For sra_danvers

Pairing: Snape/Harry
Rating: PG
Media: digital
Warnings: none

Notes: This is part of my Holiday Drawbles Drive. Donate a dollar or two and get a drawble of you favorite pairing kissing.

All of the IJ holiday sales have ended and prices are back to normal. We will be putting Permanently Insane accounts on sale for their regular price before Christmas.

( Watch his hands. )

Title: The Benefits of Rank
Author: alisanne
Character(s): Severus Snape/Harry Potter
Pairing(s): Severus Snape/Harry Potter
Rating: PG-13
Warning(s): m/m sex implied.
Challenge(s): Written for slytherins100's prompt #98: Art School
Word count: 100
Author's notes: Severus is always the teacher.
Beta: sevfan
Disclaimer: The characters contained herein are not mine. No money is being made from this fiction, which is presented for entertainment purposes only.

The Benefits of Rank

You stay classy, Ahmadinejad, you just stay classy...

I have turned on today's special Black Friday sale.

Until 4:00pm(EST) we will be holding a sale on Permanently Insane accounts, Permanent Extra Userpics, and Insane Userpics the prices are as follows.

Permanently Insane account - $30
Insane Userpics - $70
Permanent Extra Userpics - $5

At 4:00 today all prices on IJ will go back to their normal amounts.

That's right! In six days, on December second, I, Cluegirl, shall spontaneously become The Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything. (Line forms to the right, gratuities are appreciated.) For those hoopy froods who don't speak Hitchiker, I'll be turning 42.

I expect it to be nothing at all like being 41 has been, but just in case, I've liquidated my assets, put everything into canned goods and shotgun ammunition, and have stapled my towel firmly to my elbow. With that, and my wand in my back pocket, I expect I'll be ready for anything. Except possibly zombies. Zombies take a little more preparation.

As for what I want for my birthday?
No frelling idea.

I mean, there are the old standards, of course; I always get a bit giddy at just the notion that someone might illustrate one of my stories, or conversely, might write a story for one of my drawings. Collaboration is highly squee-some in my little world, y'see, and I swear that one day SOMEONE will illustrate the mirror scene from Pink Slip, and I shall expire of Happy on the spot.

I could wish for world peace and the brotherhood of man, but I've noticed how shittily brothers treat each other, and as we all know, the last time the matrix was configured for world peace, it crashed and we lost whole crops to the logic failure. So that's out.

But reining things back into the realm of the distantly plausible, I'd say I want for more or less nothing of note. I want to keep rolling on Tempus Fugitive. I want my cats and my snakes to stay healthy in the coming year. I want the resources to close up the hole in my house properly, and to begin the next major set of repairs (Hopefully before the porch falls entirely OFF Mandala House, thanks!)

And most importantly, I want my friends who are in reach to join me for a Solstice party on December 19th, to celebrate both my birthday, and the Sun King's in one swat. The date is positive; December 19th. Save it, and if you can possibly make it to Troy, NY, do consider coming! And don't worry if you're not of the witchy persuasion -- I plan no heresy, just cake and shenanigans.

Title: Sheath
Artist: ghot
Media: PS
Characters: Hermione/Luna
Rating: R
Warnings: femmeslash, cosplay.
Themes/kinks chosen: Costumes
Artist's notes: "I'm Ursula, a Bavarian witch queen who freed her people and brought revolution to her country." "I'm Xena."

( sheath )

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, snegurochka_lee!

Hope you had a great day, with lots of love 'cause you might just be one of the loveliest people I know, and HP fandom is *so* lucky to have you!

*hugs*

• Actors and Movies: Potter-cast to attend Half-Blood Prince DVD signing event in London
  
  Katie Leung contributes photograph to Sightsavers International exhibition
  
  Yorkshire Dales and Hunsbury to feature in Deathly Hallows
  
  James and Oliver Phelps to be guests on GMTV on Friday, November 27, 2009
  
  
• Hot Art: Till Death Do Us Part by Anon (Harry/Draco, Harry/Ginny; R)
  
  
• Polls: bablefisk has posted a fan-fiction survey on fanfic_bachelor
  
  
• Searches: daily_snitch is looking for fan-works and resources featuring Helga Hufflepuff
  
  

Send your fandom news to Daily Snitch!

New season of QI starts tonight! Stephen Fry's looking fit, isn't he? Well done him.

I didn't make pie today, the turkey kind of wore me down, but I was a CLEVER LAD and bought a pint of ice cream when I last bought groceries, then HID IT behind something in the freezer. And just rediscovered it, so. QUITE INTERESTING AND ICE CREAM.

And then I will sleep forever.

THAT



WAS AMAZING.

OH YES IT WAS.



You can see a couple of things -- one, NOTHING ON THE PLATE IS TOUCHING. Mock me not, I was a picky child.

Two, the herb rub is a little visible on the done turkey and definitely visible on the plated turkey. It's delicious -- like a light relish. It does make the skin more moist, though, so you don't get that lovely crackly skin.

Three, the fried stuffing was awesome -- I definitely recommend adding walnuts -- but I need a fryer basket, as one of those is visibly mangled. Still ate well.

Thee A, well, there's no sauce for the turkey. I didn't think to make gravy and if it had come out dry I would have just put a bit of bbq sauce on it, but it was so moist it totally didn't need any. It just about fell apart in my fingers, very much like properly smoked turkey will. I didn't even bother with cutlery. Because FOOD GOOD.

On the other hand, I cooked an eight pound bird and now have seven and a half pounds remaining. I've stripped off what I could -- I'm waiting for it to cool before stripping the rest -- but seriously I'm going to be eating turkey for the rest of my life.

Or until R gets back on Sunday.

I DECLARE MYSELF KING OF THANKSGIVING.

The turkey is in the oven!

I have thoroughly violated it. I washed it in cold water, rubbed herb paste under its skin, shoved apples and onions up its arse, laid it out on a rack, and oiled it all over before pushing a probe thermometer into its breast.



This is either going to be awesome or totally inedible. If the latter, well, it was art while it lasted, and I have the delivery number of an open-on-Thanksgiving sushi place.

( Aromatics and Herb Rub )

I had potato oyaki for breakfast! Which...I did not photograph, first my hands were starchy and then I was too busy eating them. It's a bit like eating a hand-held shepherd's pie.

I got the original recipe here, but I rewrote it slightly as I do most of my recipes and I want it archived here anyway.

( Potato Oyaki )

A note of explanation: Dominus is a boy scout. As such, he has the requisite Scouting addiction to Corned Beef Hash. Anywhere we go to eat, if it's got hash on the menu, I immediately know what my husband will be ordering, no matter what else they may serve. Seriously, he loves the stuff so much that from time to time, he'll scratch the hash itch with tinned. Clearly, this was a situation I could not abide. I mean, if you're gonna feed your monkey, feed it the good stuff, right? So here's what we're having for breakfast today.

* Go to your deli, and ask for a butt end of corned beef. Anything over a quarter of a pound is great, and they don't need to slice it for you. You'll be mincing it up at home yourself.

* If you are pork-compliant, then chop up three good, fatty strips of bacon, and put them in a BIG, flat-bottomed pan on low heat. (The object here is to render their fat, not to cook the bacon; cooking the bacon is a side effect of the rendering.)

* If you are pork-resistant, then do the 2 - 1 mix of olive and sesame oils here, to add the smoky taste of the bacon.

* Peel a few cloves of garlic, and crush them with the flat of your knife. Throw those in with the bacon to render.

* go out to the sage bushes, and get a handful of fresh leaves. Throw those in whole too.

* Add a generous drizzle of oil into the pan to help the bacon give it up in case it's a bit chary. I think I put about two tablespoons of olive (because I keep olive oil ready to hand. You can use whatever kind of oil you fancy, really.)

* Rough-chop a medium onion (red ones are tastiest!) and enough potatoes to match volume, then half again. In my kitchen, that was three small blue potatoes, and one large red. (I have goth tubers. No one's surprised, I know.) You want to cut them fairly large, but fairly thin -- that is to say, quarter each potato longways, and then slice the pieces about half an inch thick at most. They need to be large enough that they'll hold together, but thin enough to cook all the way through. In my case, the blue potatoes were a bit elderly, so they didn't need any pre-cooking, but I slung the red in the microwave for two turns at 30 seconds apiece, so its texture would match the others. You do as you see fit.

* Take your biggest kitchen knife -- this is the time to break out your cleaver, if you've got one, -- hack your corned beef into crumbles. There's no rhyme or reason to this, you just whack away, and try not to let it fly all over the place.

* Once the bacon's not showing any white anymore (that is, all its fatty rind should now be caramel coloured and kind of translucent) you can dump the onion, potatoes, and beef into the pot. If you don't have enough oil to lightly coat everything, then add just a little more, but otherwise, just turn the lot to get it evenly mixed and coated, throw in salt and pepper to taste, pat it all down flat in the pan, and walk away.

* Ignore the sizzling, and the searing smells from the pan for a good long time. Hash is SUPPOSED to be kind of scorchy and burny, remember? If it really distressed you, you can fuss it about for awhile first, to try and get everything to cook up, but that's kind of redundant, since you're going to settle it to scorch soon anyway, and when you flip it over to do the other side, everything else will cook up then.

* Fry up an egg for each person you'll be feeding. (From our stovetop, it looks like this is going to feed four, which means two for us today, and two lunches for Dominus later on.) Scrape all the good stuff up from the bottom of the pan, and ladle the hash into the plates, then slap the egg on top.

* Serve with tabasco, worchestershire sauce, and ketchup on the table, but don't be surprised if your guests don't even notice they're there all.

* Make this noise: OM NOM NOM!!!

* Wish you were eating breakfast with Clue and Dominus today!

On this day, citizens of the United States gather to give thanks for turkey, for the Blues, for the sanity to stay home on Black Friday, and for our foreign neighbours, who peer curiously and a little indulgently at us from across the borders. Today I'm making Tarte aux pommes et beurre de cacahuète à la Chicago, though I'm only calling it that to tease la_rainette, who objected strongly to French and Peanut Butter ever mixing. :D

I am still thankful, but I am also thankful for a job I like, a boss I like who likes me, my beloved Bigger On The Inside flat, a gas cooking range, an electric blanket that works, public transit, my family, my family being several states away, and this FIVE DAY WEEKEND OH YEAH.

In the way of attempting to cause a Thanksgiving Miracle: violetisblue contacted me yesterday (sorry this post is late, Violet!) about adopting an ITTY BITTY TORTIE KITTY. I'm not financially in the position to adopt a cat right now, plus R's allergic, so I thought I'd put out a call on the cafe.

Is there anyone in the Chicago or Northern Indiana area who is looking for a cat? She's two years old, spayed, feline leukemia negative, all her shots, no behavioural problems. Her foster mum says the shelters in their area are full and she can't keep her because her own cat has problems; she's willing to deliver her to someone who's reasonably local to the area. If you're interested, get in touch with her at violetaugustine at gmail.com. Suggestions for no-kill shelters that will take cats from across county lines are also appreciated.

Happy Thanksgiving, all!