Well so says my “A is for Apple, B is for Boar, C is for Caterpillar crawling under the Door” book that I learnt my alphabet from many years ago. But how is this linked to Stephanie and her dispensing a little extra happiness this month by making the month’s blog party theme – blogger’s choice? Hmmm our choice, there's just so many possibilities! I started plotting on the plane over to the What I didn’t want was to whip up every fruit of the sea I could think of to see that next month’s blog party was ‘from the deep’ or something similar. I needed a theme that Stephanie was hopefully not planning for one of her future gourmet gatherings and after much head scratching I decided to go for ‘J’. I would create little nibbles based on the letter ‘J’ and consider some suitably J themed table decorations also. The first on my list was jam, followed by Jaffa cakes, Jerusalem artichokes, jelly, jelly tots, jelly babies, Jersey Royals, Jalapeño, Jambalaya, jerk chicken, juice, jacket potatoes, John Dory and Jägermeister. Hmmm an eclectic bunch and clearly they are all not going to work together, but a jolly good start.
Firstly I was determined to finally christen by mini tart-shaper I bought from Pampered Chef a couple of months ago and make some jam tarts. I’d been trying to find this little wooden ‘pusher’ to help form tarts in my mini muffin tin for ages and when D when an upcoming party I found the very gadget I’d been hunting for. I’ve already made little bread tarts and scrambled egg stuffed smoked salmon with this tin for previous parties but tiny tarts had alluded me being a tad too tricky to shape. All I had to do now was pop a ball of shortcrust pastry in each pan and then push the balls into little pastry shells, it just took moments. Each shell was filled with a heaped coffee spoon of strawberry jam and then topped with a little pastry ‘J’. I baked them at 200o C for about 12 minutes, I kept a close eye on them from 8 minutes but it was nearly 12 that they lost their pallid look. Next time I'll make a slightly smaller ball as the tart shells ended up quite deep but then this is a muffin tin so there is move for expansion.
Whilst the oven was hot I thought I’d also whip up the only savoury bites that made the cut this month. I got the tiniest new potatoes I could (Jersey Royals would obviously have been perfect if it wasn’t too late in the season for them) and anointed them with olive oil. I poured a bed of salt onto a baking tray, topped with the oiled potatoes and dredged with more salt. I gave these about 30 minutes at 200o C and they baked beautifully, the salt really helping to remove the moisture in the potatoes and crisp the skin. When suitably crusted, I brushed off the salt, quartered with the point of a tiny knife and added a minute pat of butter, the obligatory black pepper and topped the jacket potatoes with grated Jarlsberg cheese, well I had to continue the J thing. The jacketed spuds sat pertly on my new little porcelain canapé tray that I procured from my brief foray to
I pondered making some Jaffa Cakes but I really think only McVities and Gary Rhodes can do that satisfactorily so settled instead for cutting them into my favourite shape -hearts. And one lucky Jaffa Cake also had a ‘J’ removed from its chocolaty middle. I was planning on making some jelly, maybe even jelly shots but instead decided to settle on the ‘smashing orangey bit’ to sate my jelly desires. I’d considered (very briefly) about ‘J’ table confetti and decided instead to plump for a ‘J’ adorned table cloth, considerably more practical and despite best efforts I’m still being haunted by bats from a previous blog party foray so that clinched it!
For the required drink I had first thought of Jägermeister, but its curiously medicinal taste takes me right back to an alarming night in a ski-lodge in Sälen, Sweden many, many moons ago that I have no particular desire to relive. So what other ‘J’ drinks could I imbibe, Jacob’s Creek or some Japanese cocktail perhaps? I thought of something juice-based but that seemed a little obvious but after wandering the aisles of Waitrose I opted for J2O, which is just a bottled juice drink let down with some water so it's not cloying as just juice can sometimes be. I thought I'd have raspberry and apple J2O, pepped up with fresh raspberries and mixed with a Scrabble 'J' crowned stirrer. And for a little drink accompaniment, I had rallied a small army of jelly babies, but only the red and black ones!
This event gave me the perfect opportunity to whip out the gorgeous J-embroidered linen napkins that Marcia did so beautifully in time for my birthday last year and as Stephanie always chooses the optimum music to match the mood I thought I’d better put a few of my own quarters in the jukebox and selected Jay Kay and Jamiroquai - there’s plenty more J is my collection but this is perfect funky cooking music.
So, in case there's any doubt - my blog party was brought to you by the letter ‘J’. I hope I guessed right Stephanie, and you’re not planning a J-themed do any day now and shock horror, I’m a tiny bit early but there may be a good reason for this – there is one other thing that ‘J’ stands for and that is - jetlag!
I'm intrigued to see what everyone else has concocted this month, and if you are also, all the other randomly themed blogging party entries will appear here when posted after Saturday...
So the "steam-heads and cheese dodgers headed for the domed roof of the Copper Canyon Observation car and M and I swayed and gently staggered the entire length of the train to New York.
This was the first time we'd been to New York, we'd clicked with Mark on our first night in the Seattle baby grand piano bar car when he ever so deftly whipped up a couple of Kir Imperials so we hadn't felt the need to be disloyal.
But it was a great spot and the back of the train had panoramic picture windows to allow us to admire the magnificent scenery developing around us. And what a revelation this was, we entered a national park hitherto unknown to me called Shasta National Forest and it felt like we were the only ones there.
The train track cut a swathe through the secluded forests and over the bridges spanning the verdant valleys past sparkling rivers and the odd American bald eagle. And as the wine was poured the beautiful scenery continued mile after mile after mile.
We chatted to the Chicago contingent celebrating a special birthday by taking this train journey. Only recently (and I ashamed many months after I drank wine in this gently swaying bar (or was that us?)) I discovered a small white plastic bull formerly attached to neck of a Spanish wine bottle in my handbag. How I ended up with it remains a mystery, I suspect the Spanish concrete factory loving architect had more than enough a felt like sharing his bully booty.
As the conversation, red wine and tranquil rivers continued to flow, the miles of idyllic scenery rolled by our windows. If I was back home now we would have run out of country and plummeted into the English Channel but we're in Big Country now. Apparently 1.2 million acres of big country I found out later – this is indeed a huge park!
As we snaked our way around the forest one of the action shots we were all trying to capture was the front of our 21 carriage train from our vantage point in the last carriage. And despite the abundant wine I think I managed to grab the shot I desired.
The cheeses weren't as bad as I feared because excuse my ignorance of American cheese because all I could think of was Monterey Jack or cheese that can be squeezed from a tube. And yes I know the English have also committed more recent processed travesties in the name of cheese but if you can forgive the modern aberrations we've committed but only focus on Montgomery Cheddar, creamy Double Gloucester, crumbly Cheshire and Wallace and Gromit's favourite Wendsleydale to name a very small few. But I have to be honest I'm not always true to my British cheesy comestible roots when constructing a cheese board and seem to be veering towards my current fads of eye-watering expensive hence elegant wedge of the finest truffled Brie and also a good hunk of Grana Padano. Though I always ask in cheese shops if they have any Flower Marie, which is a stunning English cheese but sadly rare so generally I'm told that they do not have any. But I don't know much about American cheese but none of the cheeses looked like it could have 'string' in the name so I figured I had nothing to fear. But really the wine was the best part of the cheese and wine event.
It was just the perfect way to spend our last afternoon on the Grandluxe train, meeting new friends, sharing the odd bottle of wine and swapping our memories of the trip so far. As much as I loved the places we’d explored both old and new, I would have appreciated more time to enjoy the process of travelling by train. As we didn’t have many miles to cover much of the journeying was at night, good for navigating around the train easily but o so for scenery watching. In fact due to our impressive size of train we were often relegated to the dullest of sidings whilst ‘parked up’. It was with some sadness we tore myself away from this comfortable hideaway and made our way back to our cabin to change for dinner. Not that you have to change for dinner, in fact I believe some passengers didn’t change at all from one day to the next but any chance for a little sparkle, M and I are happy to oblige.
Thank you to the Shasta National Forest for reminding us why we love to holiday by train so much – you get to enjoy both the destinations and the getting there. And no-one apart from the most avid of plane-spotters can really enjoy the process of airport travel at the moment, especially international travel – unless of course you have a fondness of queuing and a predilection for being frisked! This is so much more civilised, no mad rushing just being fabulously pampered whilst pootling around the countryside – just bliss! 
