Who talks in riddles, who talks in reasons?

At my birthday picnic we¹ really did consume an immense amount of food and drink. The shining moments of culinary delight, however, were:

1. The Eternal Pimms. corchen had the brilliant idea of buying one of those enormous tupperware cereal canisters with the lift up pour-lids, which turned out to hold about three litres of liquid. We put ice and chopped strawberries and cucumber into it, and every time it was emptied we left the fruit in the bottom and just refilled it with more liquid. Over the course of the afternoon it had added to it: Pimms and ginger ale, white wine, gin and tonic, limes, Pimms and lemonade and gin, more wine. The fruit became more and more interesting with each incarnation.

2. SALAAAADS. FOUR yummy delicious summery salads. Potato salad with new potatoes, full-fat mayonnaise, chopped fresh chives, sea salt and black pepper! Greek salad with quartered cherry tomatoes and finely sliced feta and quartered olives and mixed leaves and basil and raw garlic and a tiny bit of garlicy vinagrette! Green salad with big soft shredded lettuce and mixed leaves and avocado and spring onions and lemon zest and sliced cucumber and lemony vinagrette! Pasta salad with fusilli and tuna steak and chopped anchovies and capers and chopped cucumber and olive oil and black pepper and full-fat mayonnaise! They were faaaabulous. Although in retrospect, the pasta salad was a little too salty and should have had fewer capers, and the green salad could have got away with a lot more avocado. The potato salad was perfect. I love potato salad so much.

This summer, in the beautiful huge tiled kitchen of our luxurious penthouse uberflat, I intend to continue to make many wonderful salads. Tell me your favourite salad recipes!

[1] "We" being libellum, corchen, lovelyoliver, strongtrousers, cantabulous, wildeabandon, the_lady_lily, medieval_bunny, feanelwa, rathenar, _nicolai_, surje, casilda, deborah_c, davefish, the_alchemist, notintheseheels, deliberateblank, fiona_kitty, robinbloke, smcv. Anyone I've forgotten?

On Saturday we had the Buffy readthrough organised and hosted by smhwpf, which was enormous fun. Pure, unadulterated self-indulgence, but that didn't matter because we weren't inflicting it on any audience, we were just all indulging together. We read Prophesy Girl, Becoming I and 2, The Zeppo, some excerpts from Spiral and The Weight of the World, The Gift, excerpts from Bargaining 1 and 2, and Once More With Feeling. The best bits included:

- the many varied portrayals of Buffy, from the taking-herself-too-seriously the-end-of-the-world-is-nigh (Elly) to snappish, somewhat confused, frustrated-with-the-world (Catriona), to stubborn, compassionate, stupid self-sacrifice (Yves). And my Valley Girl, which was fun (although admittedly a somewhat dislocated, bleak Valley Girl in OMWF. With silly songs). It really brought out the development - and inconsistency - of the character throughout the series, and helped to vary the mood and pace considerably.
- Eddy, Sam's dad, who cooked a fantastic curry and played a very powerful Whistler and General Gregor.
- weaselspoon's Xander in The Zeppo. "Right. Bombs. Wow, I can't believe I had sex. No! No. Must think about the bombs!" Particularly the scene with Faith (wildeabandon). Mmm.
- the narration for The Zeppo (by romauld and smhwpf), which really came together; it was fast, funny, original, and very suited to the mood. We did end up concentrating quite a lot on the angsty season-finale side of Buffy, and it was good to get the humour in there, because Joss' one-liners are one of my favourite things about the series.
- the_alchemist as Glory, who managed without having ever watched Season 5 to be both scarier and better looking than Clare Kramer.
- leonato as Sweet in OMWF. In fact the whole of OMWF, which was just so much fun. Particularly indebted to mirabehn's bass playing, which pretty much kept the whole thing together.

Oh and I got to play Vamp Willow. I can't believe they let me! I loved every second of it. And dextress was fantastic as Willow in that episode. Fun. Funfunfun. Here are some ( photos: )

Afterwards there was an excellent party, involving singing the opening speech of Richard III to the tune of the can-can, complete with dance, performing the Richard and Anne scene in Richard III in the style of the Clangers, much telling of bad jokes, a foot massage "orgy" which somehow developed into a foot-led rendition of the Timewarp, and a rather excellent game of ( non-word Scrabble. )