Devilishly good!

Stephanie has designated this month’s blog party as devil’s food, those sinful treats you lust after when you know you shouldn’t. Though we are talking about bite-sized canapés and I’m a great believer of ‘little of what you fancy…’ but nonetheless I should be able to conjure up some wicked delights.
This last month more than ever I’ve been neither here nor there, not often at home and generally packing or unpacking. But in the spirit of ‘the show must go on’, or ‘the blog party must go on’ I started pondering some of my top decadent dishes and how I could miniaturise them whilst making one the many train journeys.
In my usual ‘cart before the horse way’ I decided on the crockery before the actual dishes. My plan was to get out my fabulous Versace Dedalo beauties that M got me for Christmas as they really are show stoppers but as it turned out I produced the eats far from home and without a wisp of Versace in sight so I have to get a little creative. In lieu of my Greek key banded lovelies I procure a black and crystal shiny frame and repurpose that to serve the nibbles on.
I seem to think beef on many of these occasions and surely one of the most wicked and rich beef dishes is Tournedos Rossini. Strictly this demands a sliver or so of foie gras but when I asked for it in the local supermarket they looked at me as if I had two heads – clearly I thought I was in Le Clerc for a moment! So instead of the foie gras I get some smooth duck pâté and sit it on top of round of rare seared beef. I wanted to make some round croûtes to form a base but I didn’t have my usual cutters to hand so instead I managed to deploy a handy metal coffee scoop to make the little discs. These were fried alongside the beef and added the perfect toasty foundations. These may have been a slight stretch to call them Tournedos Rossini but they were a fine interpretation and undeniably devilishly delicious!
Whilst getting the beef I also tried to get some little queen scallops to make my own version of Coquilles Saint Jacques but I had to settle for the larger beasts instead. I figured that M possibly formerly being the largest consumer of mini Coquilles Saint Jacques in the free world would have a surfeit of queen scallop shells but she’s destroyed the evidence. So not have any of my usual canapé spoons I had to go exploring amongst M’s cutlery drawers for suitable alternatives. Lightly searing the scallops, then dousing them with a slug of white wine and cream I then placed them in the bowls of found dessert spoons and topped them with a slick more of the sauce and grated cheese. Fearing that grilling them would mean that they couldn’t be picked up for eager consumption I protected them with foil whilst they got a blast under the grill. I had considered piping mash potato around the scallop before their final anointing but couldn’t find a suitable piping tool and boy that would have been seriously fiddly!
Whilst in the devilishly decadent frame of mind I had been pondering truffled risotto or truffled mash potato but instead opted for cocoa dusted chocolate truffles! Well they are definitely one of my favourite chocolaty nibbles.
I had planned all sorts of Chambord wildness as my wicked drink but in honour of M I opted for our ‘memories of the Cip in Venice’ honeyed dessert wine served in one of my favourite and very appropriate Perrier Jouët Belle Epoque glasses. Well Belle Epoque seriously goes witht he excessive theme and it is the original D's birthday and this was his most favourite Champagne.
The wine complements the scallops and the chocolate but maybe not so the beef! And a deserving nod to Harvey for adding a little luxurious texture to the shot!
So if you believe that 'a little of what you fancy does you good', please help yourself to a devilishly to-die-for morsel and I’ll see you at the party, don't forget your horns!

Rise and Shine!

Thinking about this month’s blog party theme of Brunch got me pondering whether they’d been other attempts to combine two meals into one catchy new meal but I’m fairly sure calling a late tea ‘dea’ or ‘tinner’ won’t catch on and twilight dinner wouldn’t be called a ‘dupper’ or ‘sinner’ – though the latter does rather conjure up visions of a wicked midnight feast!
I think the reason ‘brunch’ as a concept has proved so popular is the slightly decadent connotations, it smacks of a meal you’d have on holiday possibly after a late night carousing and you’re not sure whether a pain au chocolat would really cut it. Or it’s a leisurely weekend meal when you’ve time for something more lavish than a mere snatched bowl of cornflakes or a slice of toast. It’s a time for pancakes, good old British fry ups or the perennial favourite – the proper bacon sarnie. And me being what people refer to in slightly disdainful tones as ‘not a morning person’ find the thought of that sort of culinary wizardry on a ‘school day’ way too taxing. But come the weekend when I haven’t been rudely awakened by an insistent alarm I am a lot more amenable to whisking eggs and breaking out the smoked salmon.
So assembling a miscellany of vaguely brunch-like black and white crockery I started considering what to create for this month's log party offerings.
If I was going out to a restaurant for brunch I would really only have one thing on my mind and that would be Eggs Benedict. A dish designed to include most of my major food groups – a golden yolked poached egg just waiting to erupt over the smoky ham and muffin and the whole enchilada drenched in a creamy smooth buttery hollandaise sauce. Sometimes I fancy a change and opt for the smoked salmon and spinach version but normally it’s the classic – and woe betide the poached egg not being runny enough!
The rather topsy-turvy nature of my life at the moment I should perhaps have plumped for the easy option of fashioning canapés from slices of buttered toast but instead I go straight for the ‘double or nothing’ by choosing to make Miniature Eggs Benedict. It’s quite a feat of timing and tenacity as not only have you got the ever fiddly quail eggs to decapitate and then poach for just shy of 2 minutes there’s the possibility of a temperamental hollandaise to contend with also. But I thought faint hearts and all that and gathered the ingredients. The easy job was getting a round cutter and making bread and ham discs for the base of the Benedict. Next it was the pan of water on for poaching and the careful beheading of the resilient quail egg shells. Thomas Keller in the French Laundry cookbook prepares an awesome egg and bacon amuse gueule and recommends firstly gently removing the more rounded egg of the quail egg shell with a serrated knife – I opted for a steak knife to pierce those tough little shells. Then the topped quail egg should be placed back in the egg box in preparation for poaching. This ‘mis en place’ has top be done first as it is quite tricky, will definitely impede you and mess up the poaching timings if you try the beheading one by one whilst hovering over the simmering water.
With the eggs all lined up back in their box I turned to the hollandaise. I only needed a soupçon to nappé the domes of poached quail eggs so I opted for the ‘almost instant hollandaise’ recipe using my trusty silver Bamix. It uses only a single egg yolk so is the perfect quantity. The final flourish has to be the tiniest flecks of freshly chopped chives. My perfectionist streak kicks in and they have to be uniform little green rings – I’m sure Thomas Keller would be proud!
After my perfect brunch dish it seems odd to try and think beyond that but I do rather have a penchant for my super creamy scrambled eggs. And deploying the never-tainted-by-coffee liquorice Nigella espresso cups seems the perfect vehicle for a spoonful or two of the soft eggy curds and of course topped with a scatter of that verdant dandruff again.
For my final brunch morsel I just had to pounce on one of my favourites what I spotted it in Waitrose’s Authentic French range – the Tarte Flambé. I have waxed lyrically about this little Alsatian treat before. It is like a pizza, but a pizza for those who can’t abide tomato. It has a crème fraîche base and lardons of smoky bacon strewn on top and is very delicious. And this new Waitrose one – sadly not available via Ocado yet is a tasty little snack and if I had a wood fired pizza oven to hand I am sure I would whip up a Tarte Flambé regularly for brunch or other meals.
The obligatory drink that always flummoxes me was an easier choice this month as any foodie diva knows that a decadent brunch deserves a proper White Peach Bellini – just like Harry’s Bar in Venice. And again thanks to Waitrose I could get my hands on the requisite white peach pulp and not have to resort to orange juice as seems to be de rigueur in ‘lesser’ establishments. Well it makes a change from cracking open the Chambord I guess.
Happy brunching…let’s see what everyone else brought to the party…

Some like it hot...

Stephanie wants us to add a little spice to this month’s blog party, and my first thought was urgghh I am not particularly a fan of spicy food but that’s possibly just my personal prejudice. I have always disliked curries of any heat and an abundance of chillies in any food but other spices I really do enjoy. Freshly crushed aromatic black pepper scattered over almost anything, a few scrapes of nutmeg makes a cauliflower cheese or egg custard sing, I love a little kick from some Dijon mustard smeared over meat before searing, hot cross buns cries out for mixed spice and cinnamon and finally ginger enrobed with silky dark chocolate has to be one of my favourite culinary marriages.
I was interested to read in Glynn Christian fascinating book “How to Cook without Recipes” that he agrees with me that the excessive chilli heat that some diners insist upon is an incorrect assumption that who you need it enjoy certain foods authentically. He refers to locals having a chilli-scarred tongue due to years of eating the hot food of their native cuisine as to them it doesn’t taste particularly hot. If I tried to keep up with my delicate northern England palate, I just find it much too painful and wouldn’t remotely get any pleasure from that meal. And even though I’ve enjoyed a warming hint of chilli in an autumnal butternut squash risotto or if feeling daring in a square of dark chocolate but that’s the extent of my tolerance. Glynn quotes Aerosmith’s Joe Perry talking in BonAppetit magazine on the subject - “I found a lot…bury the flavour of everything else. A really strong habanero flattens your taste buds. It’s like listening to really loud music all time. You don’t hear any nuance anymore”
But without resorting to my Masala Dabba (generally a double lidded stainless steel tin containing seven smaller stainless steel pots) for spicy dabblings as I don’t actually own one, I am sure I can spice things up a bit anyway.
Firstly it’s just after Valentine’s Day and I do love a heart shaped food so when I decided for some delicious canapés of peppered beef on rösti I thought I’d spice things up by cutting the rösti into heart-shapes - just to make it a little more challenging. The taste was unaltered but they made cute and tasty little nibbles.
Inspired by a Nigella recipe for some sticky gingerbread, I thought I’d reinterpret it into a sticky little mouthful. Nigella topped hers with a lemon laced icing whereas for some peculiar reason I felt that the super sticky gingerbread wasn’t enough so I scattered mine with cubes of even more incredibly sticky stem ginger. I think it will take a week to syrupy stickiness off my fingers by the stem ginger topped ginger cake was very good to eat.
My first thought of spicy drink was a Bloody Mary but though I know that a vodka-free version is a Virgin Bloody Mary I wasn’t sure what you’d call a tomato-free one, Mary perhaps? As I wasn’t sure that a Mary would set the world alight I went in search of some ginger cocktails. I’ve had some fabulously ginger-laced concoctions at Jewel and Lab in the rare occasions I indulge in cocktails in some trendy London bar. I found a great suggestion from Olive magazine for a Ginger Champagne, and as I had a surfeit of cubed stem ginger and some root ginger I thought I’d embellish it all a little – Ginger Fizz anyone?
So despite not being able to cope with food that it too hot, hot, hot (I’ve probably been traumatised by that scary green chilli on the Subway advert) I’ve managed to spice up my February a little. And if they answer the door to me, as I am rather late – their spicy contributions will be here.

Hawaii five oh!

Hmm Hawaiian food, Stephanie’s latest blog party theme certainly posed a challenge to me. Is it terribly wrong of me to immediate think of pizza? Okay to be honest I have never indulged in Hawaiian food, but I am not quite as ignorant as I was. I watched an old series of Top Chef last year and became a little more conversant with the repast of the ‘Big Island’. But despite my slight new knowledge I didn’t think I’d be able to rustle up anything resembling Kim Chee, Poi, Poke or Taro. So I thought I’d just go back to my first thought of ‘pineapple’.
I haven’t had a pineapple on my pizza for many years; I guess it would have been a mainstay on my very first pizzas, when I thought it was good to have ‘deep-pan’, and often found it hard to convince the kitchen to keep tomato far away from my pizza. My pizza tastes have now matured (or so I believe!). The thinnest and crispiest of pizza bases is more highly prized now, especially if given that distinctive smoky taste from a wood-fired oven. I would never dream of having pineapple on my pizza now, it is considered terribly unauthentic and most pizza places eschew pineapple, unless they are being ironic! Now I hanker for a crème fraîche topped thin base with some torn artichoke, pancetta and mozzarella. Oh yes, terribly grown up!
But I don’t want to make pizza for this event, no I thought I’d have a retro moment a revisit my very first introduction to the exciting world of sandwich toasting. I know I was still at school when this magical Breville machine turned up in our kitchen. I flicked through the accompanying booklet and my eyes alighted on the Hawaiian, a gorgeous concoction of melting cheese, canned flaked tuna and pineapple rings. This delight became my main indulgence on returning home from school until a kybosh was put on my excessive pineapple consumption.
I haven’t had these little tropical treat for many years but this month’s blog party seemed to be a good time to resurrect the idea. I wanted to try and create the sealed edges of the Breville because it keeps all the molten cheese and pineapple juices inside where it belongs. I pondered trying to make some bread ravioli like tiny Cornish pasties but it all seemed way too complicated so I opted for putting the buttered bread in the sandwich toaster as usual – I now have one that you place on the hob and turn over half way through cooking but my cunning plan was to start toasting the sandwich and then delicately rotate it 90 degrees to seal edges a second time. This would make little ham, cheese and pineapple filled quarter toasted sandwiches. The sealing didn’t entirely work and cheese and pineapple juice oozed out all over the place but the resultant sandwiches still tasted pretty good.
For the dessert idea, I wanted to use the remaining pineapple pieces on little skewers with a little chocolate sauce drizzled over the spiked fruit. I had intended dipping the dried pineapple slices in chocolate but they were a little thinner and crispier than I thought, a tasty little nibble though so I served them on the side.
For the drink I had another blast from the past and went for pineapple juice and lemonade laced with fresh pineapple and a couple of sun-baked slices. Pineapple juice and lemonade was the drink I had when I used to frequent pubs with my older friends before I was eighteen. My parents agreed I could go for a drink after we’d finish our evening’s voluntary work on the sole condition that I didn’t indulge in alcohol. And I didn’t, I was a very good girl! Instead I had glass after glass of pineapple and lemonade, not a drink I’ve had since I think. So not authentically Hawaiian I think, I am sure Stephanie’s other guests will do better but at least I went for the tropically vibrant plates to serve my attempts on. Aloha!

Family Festive Favourites

I can’t believe it – next week and Christmas will be a pile of torn paper, ribbon and wondering what to do with that leftover turkey, a handful of sprouts and a roastie or two. I’m pretty much on top of the Christmas presents; though I’ve managed to lose one though which is both odd and massively annoying as now I really need to replace it. And of course it would be one that I had delivered from a specialist site! But the cards, I haven’t even started yet, hmm perhaps a tad late again.

This month’s blog party seemed a little like last month with the festive theme but this time with the traditional twist. What are our little family foodie peccadilloes that pepper these holiday feasts? Well as usual a host of varied ideas flooded my brain, some I managed to pull off in time and the others may sadly have to be confined to the food bin. And generally this just means I was too ambitious which exactly coincided with me being just too busy.

So what did I manage to pull off in the nick of time? Breakfast is a crucial meal on Christmas day. Our family tradition is to start passing round the parcels and opening them one by one at the stroke of midnight and this has been known to take a while so breakfast becomes a moveable feast. And what would this possible late breakfast/ brunch consist of? If we’re feeling deeply ‘family favourite’ it would probably be bacon sarnies all round though ideally in a well buttered oven-bottom (now you’re talking!) but smoke salmon lends itself so well to Christmas lunch but as we don’t normally have a prequel to the main event the smoked salmon started appearing earlier in the day. So that’s exactly what my first canapés were about – tasty bacon sandwiches and spoons of smoked salmon laced scramble eggs. And a small pause of appreciation for my wonderful diddy silver cake stand. Though ‘cake stand’ is perhaps too large a concept so instead I’ll call it a ‘tiny tiered podium for petit fours’. And it’s that time of year so the seasonal sequins are out again.

And for the homage to many a past Christmas extravaganza the next nibble is beef wrapped in a Parma ham jacket. This displaced the traditional turkey in our household many Christmases ago. The original D never was a turkey fan and when asked for an alternative it was always beef. This became the time-honoured treatment as it was as good hot or cold the day after. I think the inspiration was from a Jamie Oliver recipe and then it just became the way we ate beef. I’ve never made a miniature version before but it tasted just as fabulous.

And for the drink, amongst the inevitable sweet Muscat wine that we always have, they will be some mulled wine or winter PIMM’s. This delicious concoction is warmed PIMM’s no.3 (which is the brandy version) with three times as much apple juice and finished with a few slices of red apple. It fair warms the cockle of your heart.

The bites that missed the deadline are definitely memories from Christmases gone by. Firstly it would have to be sprouts! The seasonal emergence of sprouts seems to fill many diners with dread but I love them. It is true that many a crime has been committed in the name of sprouts; they are either cooked within an inch of their lives or left a little bitter from lack of cooking. I liked them lightly steamed or boiled and then sautéed in a little butter and then served with bacon lardons and if feeling so very classic Christmas table some chestnuts. Though I’ll never forget the first time I took on the epic Christmas meal preparation for a group of friends. It was probably the first time I’d tackled it but promised a table groaning with everyone’s favourite typical festive fare before we all headed off back to our families for Christmas. WJ and I set off to buy the necessary ingredients, we had no idea how much to buy of everything so grabbed a Family Circle magazine which I remembered flicking through stacks of as a child. It seemed we were in safe hands; we followed the shopping list to the letter including buying chestnuts for roasting. I can’t quite recall how many of us were eventually settled around the table, I think maybe five or possibly six but the big surprise was how much food we actually purchased. Everything was stacked away in their capacious kitchen and then WJ and headed off for some fabulous media party (WJ’s eminent connections I hasten to add, not mine). Due to a mix-up with door keys and some other WJ drama (there was also something) I didn’t finally return to this big house in Shepherd’s Bush until the early morning and be unable to get into the bedrooms thought I’d while away the time until everyone else surfaced prepping the vegetables. And what a mountain there was! I fashioned some tea towel apron over my little black velvet party dress and started the peeling and criss-cross cutting of all the sprouts – well I was following the doctrines of the terribly conventional Family Circle. When I was relieved of my KP duties after a couple of hours I have prepped an allotment worth of vegetable and also popped the scored chestnuts under the grill for roasting. I was sent to bathe and change into something less backless and whilst I surrounded myself in restorative bubbles I ran through the final plan and countdown in the Family Circle magazine. This is when I realised the classic mistake, in all our planning and slavishly following the campaign plan in the magazine, we hadn’t even checked the quantity of guests that this menu was for – so imagine my horror when I realised it was twelve! That immediately explained why they were just so much vegetables to be prepped. Before I even had time to ponder this error I could hear screaming from the kitchen downstairs and ran dripping in to the kitchen to see what drama was unfolding. And I was greeted with WJ and her housemates cowering underneath the kitchen table whilst shards of red-hot chestnut pieces whizzed around the kitchen. I’m not entirely sure if I hadn’t scored them enough or just they’d been left ‘roasting’ too long but they certainly took on a dangerous turn. I think the resultant meal went down rather well but we had about three times more food than required and the explosive chestnuts that were supposed to accompany the sprouts became legendary.

The sprouts I had grown up with were far less perilous; the original D had always insisted that his renowned gravy demanded the water from the boiled sprouts, some beef dripping or lard, corn flour and gravy browning but rather curiously never juices from the roasting meat. And as no Sunday lunch was complete with this much-loved gravy (well at least by the original D as no-one else was that enamoured) so sprouts always featured.

The other canapé I’d planned was involving some ubiquitous Paxo stuffing, I’ve made much more elaborate stuffing with all manner of sausage meats, herbs and fruits but the one M amongst others always hanker for is good old Paxo sage and onion. So curtailing both my desire (according to D) to find the most complicated method to make anything and my abhorrence of strange packets of dehydrated sawdust I have abandoned thoughts of anything more sophisticated. However unfortunately due to a houseful of people and my inability to slip some sort of sprout or Paxo canapé into the French feast I’d planned they will have to remain on the drawing board.

So I hope you are all a little more organised than me, the tree is groaning with shiny intriguing parcels and those cards were written and send a couple of weeks ago.

Festive felicitations to you all! And all those who got their acts together earlier – what did they bring to the party?

Holiday, celebrate...

Yes again, it’s a crazy finish to get my plates together for the blog party, but it seems to be a regular occurrence now and if I not tearing in at the last minute, and quickly slipping off my coat and sneaking my dishes amongst all the early birds' offerings it almost seems wrong!
When the ever brilliant Stephanie set this month's blog party as 'holiday' I did wonder if that meant Thanksgiving or Christmas or any other holiday you fancied - am I the only one who celebrates Coco Chanel's birthday? But that's August 19th so she can't have possible had that particular 'holiday' in mind! It seems too early to be thinking festive (D would probably say December 24th is too soon to be in ‘that’ frame of mind) and I don’t really do Thanksgiving but I love a holiday so I’m sure I can conjure up something sparkly. I guess my fellow bloggers from across the pond will be doing the Thanksgiving thing in anticipation of the special feast next Thursday but apart from if our favourite Texan brings us in her fabulous pumpkin pies (hint, hint) I don’t indulge so I thought I’d think ahead to next month.
My first thought was a bit of smoked salmon, as so many of our festive meals have started with smoked salmon. And for the holiday twist I thought I’d cut the granary bread bases in a Christmas tree shape, however once topped with cream cheese, curls of pale rosy salmon and then chives, they lost their form a little. So I left a tiny unadorned tree to show they were indeed Christmas tree shaped under all that tastiness. It did cross my mind to try and cut the salmon into the tree shapes but honestly, that would have meant I was another week getting this posted and would have missed the evening all together!
Next I was determined that some beautiful rare beef fillets would form one of the holiday canapés and the wonderful sea salt and cracked black pepper Crips I bought from the Good Food show last week made the perfect vehicle. Crips are as it says on the packet ‘lovingly baked’ in the oven so are more like crackers than crisps and considerably lower in fat, but more importantly taste really good.
These salt and pepper Crips I topped with a little feisty horseradish cream, stacked with the slices of the rare just seared at the edges beef and then dolloped with a little fresh pesto. Well, maybe the pesto wasn’t as fresh as it should have been and delicious as it was didn’t make me feel too hot later, but let’s not dwell on that slight error!
It didn’t seem right to not do something with turkey but I can’t really get my head around turkey pieces. Yes if you put some effort into a turkey, buy a good one, brine it à la Nigella and carefully lift up the skin from the flesh and stuff full of yummy goodies you can end up with a dish to be proud of. But let’s be honest, so many turkeys are sadly bred for quantity and not for quality and turkey breasts, I think they exist solely to bulk out the egg whites for the ‘body is my temple’ types. So some happy, organic chicken got stuffed with soft cheese and chopped jewels of cranberries to make these hot nibbles spiked with the diamond cocktail sticks to keep them under control.
Okay that’s the savoury corner dealt with, next the sweet treats. I have never really got Christmas pudding but I thought I might be able to scale them right down to make quintessential festive bites with balls of warm Christmas pudding, anointed with icing and topped with a little more sparkly gems of dried cranberries. And I thought they were the nicest Christmas pudding I’d tasted.
And for the drink I was inspired by the Olive festive drink clementine fizz and decided to continue with the theme by dipping some clementine segments in the deepest darkest Valrhona chocolate.
So that’s my first throws of holiday contemplations. I picked up a wonderfully sparkly mat to set of the diamond studded martini glass I made for my birthday celebrations. I spotted this bit of silver loveliness in an elaborate table display in John Lewis but I couldn’t find them for sale. There were stacks of gold ones but the only silver I could find was in the display, so the elegant table setting got slightly rearranged – sorry John Lewis, but it’s gone to a grateful home. And I am hoping if the inimitable Coco Chanel helping me celebrate a holiday tonight, she would approve of the glamorous styling.
Happy holidays everyone - whichever holiday you want to celebrate! And see how the other earlier partygoers make the occasion here when posted...

What's a little blood amongst friends?

I’m not sure why I’m so frantic at the moment, there seems to be periods of ‘death by PowerPoint’ and a lot of running hither and thither, hence such a dearth of blogging. But after the trip I am due to leave for in 15 minutes, yes blogging by the skin of my teeth again – I am hoping from some weeks of relative tranquility and intense blogging. Well that’s plan A. The blogging parties seem to utterly coincide with me arriving back from travelling all jetlagged and fuzzy or manically stuffing a suitcase before running for a train (I missed the one I was aiming for last blog party and got a right ticking off from a man in a peaked cap, but thankfully not fined), I am not sure if the airlines can be so persuaded so this will be short and sweet or short and a little icky!

Stephanie went for some Gross Anatomy theme which threw me completely. I hit the usual suspects by Google and realised that there is a world of rather gory food creations out there, often involving way too much tomato ketchup really for anyone’s good but it didn’t get my creative juices flowing I just felt a little grossed out – is that the point? I had a yen for some fabulous little skeleton table confetti but time was completely against me and being disinclined to whip up some slimy eyeball soup or worm filled head I opted for judicious shopping instead. Marks & Spencer kindly produced some ‘squirting skulls’ this year which seemed to play into the theme. They are jelly skulls filled with jammy liquid fruit centre. Rather tasty even though the idea is a little creepy.

And the drink – well all those clutching glasses of Bloody Mary I will have to avoid as that tomato juice is one of the most hideous creations ever and just smell sooooo bad. And as I write this I am fairly convinced that I will be saddled with a Bloody Mary (or even Virgin Mary, they are both horrible) addict sat in the seat next to me who’ll be waving the air hostess over at regular intervals to top up his addiction and I will be silently screaming the whole journey over the Atlantic. So after that little glimpse of my personal hell I choose the wonderfully bloody looking raspberry and boysenberry juice with the suitably anatomical glass heart stirrer. So I'm rather early which must be a shock to all and also that haven't totally gone overboard this month (for a change you say) - but maybe next month I'll make up for it big time, no more body parts though please?
Happy early Halloween everyone, enjoy the body part-y. Must fly, literally!

It's my party and I'll share if I want to...

So Stephanie sets this month's blogging theme as 'birthday' and I think “result” with it being my birthday and all. And then I realise it can't be all about me even though I’m an expert at being a 'birthday queen' so I'm happy to share my birthday blog party with all the other Virgoeons (and whatever comes after Virgo, Libra I think). So I'm going to extend a special diamond encrusted invite to Stephanie and promise some non meaty and alcohol free treats to toast your birthday also. And of course a pink fluffy invite to KK who shares a birthday with me and wasn't feeling well enough to enjoy her own pink 2nd birthday cupcakes. I'd offer you one of mine but as will be explained later I don't know if mummy would approve! And for my dearest DD, only a few short weeks until we're back at ‘our table’ in Union Square Café sipping Kir(a) Imperials and nibbling those nuts. Oh the divas are back in the Big Apple again, be very afraid! But birthday food is just not enough; it just needs a little more hence me deciding to give my 'birthday' party a little more heart-shaped, sparkly, diamond dusting to it. First the important fact of the cake, well miniature cupcakes seemed to be perfect and of course chocolate ones in particular. In fact I went for chocolate brownie cupcakes as all my cupcake recipes needed milk and I don't generally have any in unless I'm expecting MC and the brownies recipe was milk-less. And they looked ever so cute in their leopard print cupcake cases! Now if I'd left it there it might have been okay but I considered that they needed that little more pizzazz and for the occasion I had procured some edible black glitter, black sparkly candles, dug out my heart shaped silver candle holder and even adorned a black plate with some suitable heart-shaped bling. Yes just a little more juzzing to make them officially 'diva' cupcakes. The edible black glitter had the requisite sparkle, added an extra sweet crunch and to my horror turned my lips and mouth black! Ah, happy birthday to me! Well maybe it's because they're still warm from the oven, maybe by the time I pack up the two dozen leopard print jacketed brownie morsels and get them to the office the alarming sooty lip staining effect will have subsided. Well at least I hope so. I don't really want to booby-trap my birthday cake for everyone! When my team starting tucking in I was on the phone so wasn't able to warn them, apart from a hasty mumbled hint at their 'unusual properties'. But looking around after a few had vanished none of them looked like they'd been snacking on coal so indeed the comedy effect seemed to have diminished. Well, at least unless the last few! I'd just done the rounds of the office with the plate and was discussing with dh my birthday plans when I noticed her lips and then teeth were distinctly inky blue. Oh my! These are joke cupcakes, but with an intriguing Russian roulette element. Either it's a freaky chemical reaction that only some people have (a little like the infamous asparagus one) or some of the bite-sized cakes just bit back! So feel free to grab one or two but at your peril!

As well as cake it had to be jelly and ice cream but with that extra ‘je ne sais quoi’ again!

But first before the sugar high I thought I'd better squeeze in some savoury nibbles. I'd been desperately trying cast my mind back to birthday parties of old to recall our chosen party fare. But my main memory was a wasp caught inside the large carton of orange squash and the 9-shaped birthday cake having my name spelt incorrectly. I'm sure there must have been more for my be-ribboned party guests to scoff but I can’t really recall. I'd take a bet at crisps and peanuts and maybe some skinny possibly slightly curled at the edges sandwiches or finger rolls. It would have never ever been marmite at my party but perhaps hard boiled egg, potted meat or cheese. I am fairly sure of cocktail sausages or sausage rolls. So perhaps I can bring these three sandwich fillings up to date, lose the bread and give them a little gourmet canapé treatment. So instead of potted meat or meat paste (that even sounds evil) I opt for considerably more delicious beef Carpaccio enveloping cubes of Grana Padana cheese and spiked with the evitable diamond picks, well when I have a theme... And they were certainly a fine little nibble.
So that's the meat and cheese revamped, now the egg! And the modern take on the old favourite hard boiled egg was little glossy quail eggs and a miniature mound of celery salt, again impaled with the bejewelled sticks. All these lovely food needed capturing and writing up but therein lies the problem. My laptop had done the thing it did last time and just refused to switch on so I rang 'if your computer is ill call Phil!' again and he relieved me of my dead HP for a little open heart surgery. But that's where all my photos live of all the fabulous foodie excursions I've indulged on and haven't yet blogged. I guess there's always my work laptop, it wouldn't have my photos but at least I could write my blog. But sadly my work IBM being such a homebody doesn't really like leaving my desk. Even if I take it into a meeting room it sulks, refuses to connect to the wireless network and flatly refuses to do anything useful until it is back safely in its docking station. It’s like a moody teenager, if there's a computer equivalent to the 'whatever!' attitude then annoyingly my laptop has it. But ignoring its proclivities, needs must so I took it home. Big mistake! There was a little run in with some torrential rain, part of the 'glorious weather we've endured all summer' and the laptop went bang! Well it turned out to be the power pack and the wall socket it was plugged into. Yes, a stroppy teenager, one that has now resorted to downright vandalism! So it seems no laptop, no access to the internet and no blogging for me! But during the hiatus I've been visiting a host of fabulous extremely blog-worthy establishments and now am even further behind with all the catch-ups. When I finally get my laptop back at the beginning of the week, I am then utterly embroiled in trying to prepare for a work presentation so yet again no blogging for me. And then I had to wrestle with some heart-shape jellies, hastily post the photos to the blog, pack for two trips and leave to run for my train. I’m sitting on my train writing the words to accompany the hurriedly uploaded images and wondering when I’ll be able to release it all to the world. Seemingly the computers I am coming into contact with at the moment are determined to misbehave and M’s is no exception as it has itself been convalescing for the last month at another home of a PC doctor and therefore she is also internet-less.
Whilst I have been denied access to the world-wide-web I did find some time to embellish a crystal martini glass for my birthday-blog party drink. I was veering between some sort of Chambord-Champagne combo but I thought I’d be alcohol free this month in Stephanie’s honour and made some sort of raspberry liqueur laced (hmm maybe a tiny percentage of proof in there) and sugar-free Red bull. It was actually a great combination; it’s a cut down version of The Chambord Energiser which would normally have a healthy slug of vodka. The original drink recipe normally uses sugar-ful Red Bull but personally I find this a little too exuberant for my tastes. The advert does say that ‘Red Bull gives you wings’ and that’s probably the intention to give you a little head-rush but the combination of the excessive caffeine and sugar is a little too stimulating for me. In deference to the recipe change, I’ll change the name and in honour of the rather fabulous glass I’ll call it a Chambord Sparkler.
I also had to consider how to add a little glamour to the obligatory ice cream and jelly. The ice cream was an easy one – after several previous canapé productions for blog parties where I spent way too long trying to corral rapidly melting ice cream into something attractive I decided just to just serve small porcelain spoons of the finest Belgium chocolate ice cream scattered with the tiniest of silver sugar balls served on the canapé platter I bought back from Portugal. The balls were so small I feared I may have inadvertently bought ball bearings but no these dots of ‘robot dandruff’ were indeed edible – phew and they didn’t turn your mouth silver or black!
My final birthday bite was the jelly; I’d been determined to make some heart-shaped raspberry jelly studded with fresh raspberries. Firstly I had to track down a silicone heart-shaped ice tray mould, and ignoring the fact that I’m sadly allergic to it (that’s the silicone bit not the heart-shapedness of it!) I then got the raspberries but sadly work stuff and birthday stuff got in the way and the raspberries became a little furrier than I’d like before I had a chance to encapsulate them in jelly. So new raspberries procured and time rapidly running out, I arrived home on the last train and in the wee small hours thought I’d make the jelly and pack. In a moment or creativeness/insanity I made up the jelly mixture with more Red Bull and then dropped a plump raspberry in each. After nowhere near enough hours sleep mainly due to some last minute furious emailing (you know who you are!) I awake to find the jelly is still very much liquid but hope that a quick burst in the freezer will allow me to turn out the perfect jelly little hearts. Just in the nick of time I was able to turn some out in the manner I’d envisaged and produce a rather tasty little morsel, though I did feel I was having my monthly virtual feeling of waves of disbelief coming from the direction of D, if she had been there there would have been much head-shaking and eye-rolling. Even since the debacle with the mini chocolate Magnums I can sense what her thoughts are on the bizarre machinations I conduct in the name of a diva-esque canapés each month. Well, a girl's got to have a hobby!

I would recommend jelly with Red Bull, it certainly gives the jellies and intriguing kick and a subtle fizz on the tongue. Maybe not entirely ideal for children's parties however, as you may have to scrape the little darlings off the ceiling if they have more than one!
All in the all, despite the last minute panic (would it be me without one?), the catastrophic failure of all technology around me and the incredible yet selective mouth-staining brownies it was a glittering birthday affair. Now leaving a little trail of black fairy dust in my wake, I must finally extinguish the birthday candles and find a working computer. Cupcake anyone? Happy birthday to me and Stephanie and all the rest of you that celebrate this month.
See you on Saturday...hopefully - if of course M's computer rises from its deadbed - cousin A, I am depending on you!

Stepping back in time

Wow the month has whipped round quickly again, the Retro themed blogging party is nigh and I’ve been immersed in mandarin slices, pear cider, lashings of cheese, pineapple, fat garlic bulbs, breadcrumbs and three flavours of ice cream. In fact I thought last week was the deadline and had a mad panic to finish everything. Stephanie assured me that I was being a tad too eager and I relaxed slightly, and that transpired to be the fatal mistake! When I turned on my laptop to titivate my photos, write my blog and get posting, that’s where it all went wrong. The lights were very much on but there was no-one home. I could hear the comforting sound of the hard drive whirring but the screen was utterly blank. Disaster, it would have to return to the laptop hospital again and I would have to find another computer to toil over. That would mean my attempt to finish posting all the GrandLuxe escapades would have to wait also. Fortunately I was able to take my work laptop on a holiday and use that but even that one has been playing up. What highly strung little computers I seem to be saddled with; they are like race horses or possibly premier league football players! So I figure I better write this sharpish before something else goes wrong.

Stephanie announced that the first month of the fourth year of monthly blogging parties would be a return to old theme – Retro. Immediately my mind was a whirl of prawn cocktails, black forest gateau or something in enrobed in the dreaded aspic. And then I remembered I didn’t actually like any of them so I think of some old classic dishes that I would actually deign to eat. Next I had to consider the crockery, I had some fabulous 50’s black and white side plates I purchased off eBay last year and I turned to that global marketplace again for a couple of other bits. I found some vintage looking 'homage to Missoni' black and white plates when I went looking for the infamous Midwinter crockery I recall so well from my childhood. Actually as could be expected I did unearth some fine examples of the brown and burnt orange flowered chunky Denby plates from the 70’s but that it was rather terrifying then and utterly excruciating now so stuck to the black and white theme much closer to my little monochrome heart. But I did get inspiration for the drink which is always a challenge for me at these events, it’s a party, it’s digging out some glitzy jewellery and you know what they say “nothing sparkles like a Babycham” So whilst perusing eBay I bid for an old Babycham glass, I purposely choose the the one where the gold rim was rather worn and almost non-existent as even though I was aiming for authenticity I had to retain a modicum of my own tastes and I can’t bear a gold rim.

So I have the table laid, the frock picked out, I just need to get the food sorted and I can have my very own Abigail’s party.

After my initial thoughts leapt to food I didn’t even really like I consulted Simon Hopkinson and Lindsey Bareham “The Prawn Cocktail Years” cookbook for a little taste bud stimulation. And there I realised many of the food I still love transpires to be the bistro and trattoria fare of days gone by. There was so much to choose from but eventually I whittled them down to a smaller selection.

I did consider whether the retro look should extend to the photography as well and had a vague attempt at emulating that slightly over-garish and brown tinged look but I think the styling gives it away. There’s too little in the picture to really conjure up the food photography of the 70’s, there should be a plush patterned curtain, coloured napkins many of, bowls overflowing fruit, cut flowers everywhere, candles preferably lit and the shot should be much wider taking in the chunky dining chairs and much of the room beyond. We do so like our” less is more” now, the Donna Hay way of clean white lines, the odd folded again white or ecru napkin (or possibly tea-towel – so very outré!) and minimum accoutrements. The polka dot plate, although retro is totally the wrong era for the look I was aiming for, it should have been the chunky brown glazed slightly rustic Denby. If I’d really wanted to go the whole hog maybe I should have scoured charity shops for inspiration instead!

My first thought turned to cheese fondue; I just recall many a party at home would have one of these kirshed-spiked creations bubbly at the side of the table with that evocative smell of the burner mingling in with the aromas of hot cheese and wine. I had bought a bottle of pear cider or perry and figured that would do the job for a mini-fondue. I did look around for a suitable volcanic orange or red ramekin to serve the fondue in but I must have left all these back in the 80’s so a Serious Food ceramic pot it is. The best thing about individual cheese fondues is you don’t really have to mess around with the fondue burner et al. Though saying that it is a crucial part of a fondue party, setting forfeits for losing your impaled bread cube and everyone tipping a little extra white wine into the dregs to revitalise it. And if truth be told I now have an electric fondue set so I don’t have to mess around with all those vapours but in this case I wanted the scaled down cheese fondue experience. I made the fondue in a pan with various rinds of cheese, the perry and cornflour. The smell of the wine cooking is very evocative and I am instantly transported back to many a previous fondue. The unctuous cheesy mixture turned out to be the perfect vehicle for my poppy-seeded bread cubes skewered on little cocktail forks.

My next ambitious plan was to make dinky little Chicken Kiev bites. Like many children I couldn’t initially cope with garlic so would eschew the fragrant garlic bread, garlic-laced mushrooms and garlic butter spurting chicken Kiev so this was a chance to make amends. I first replenished my freezer of its stock of heavily garlic studded parsley butter for the Kiev innards. I often pummel ends of pack butter with garlic, herbs or other zesty ingredients in the pestle and mortar to add a bit of interest to some steaming vegetables or plain fillet of fish. I wrap the butter into cling-filmed sausages and pop in the freezer to just slice off a couple of flavoursome discs when needed. I flattened the recently free-ranging chicken breast between two more pieces of cling film and wrapped the tiny slices around a pat of the garlic butter. It would have been easier to turn the chicken into a mousse but I thought it might change the whole dish so I soldiered on. I had some ends of a white loaf I’d been saving so Bamixed them up into the finest of breadcrumbs. The diminutive chicken parcels were floured, eggs and then drenched in the seasoned breadcrumbs and popped in the fridge to firm up. I pan-fried the nuggets just to get a nice golden colour and then finished them off in the oven. The worked perfectly, as long as you didn’t mind possibly taking an eye out with a spurt of hot garlic butter that made excellent little party nibbles. Maybe next time I’d serve them with safety goggles.

I recall an always present though rather naff table adornment to any self-respecting buffet was some tin foiled covered half a melon speared with cubes of cheese, pineapple and sometimes but not in my house – tiny silverskin onions. I remembered I was a huge fan of cheese, pineapple and ham or tuna in a toasted cheese sandwich which I used to conjure up in our first sandwich toaster as a gourmet treat for me and friends after school. But would the cheese and pineapple work without the ham or tuna I wondered? Well it was okay, I scaled down my little savoury hedgehog for the occasion and they did indeed take me back to plates of flaccid sausage rolls, Twiglets – ugghh Marmite!, strange pale possibly chicken v ol au vents and rivers of salad cream. Being such a fussy child I was never in my element being presented with platters of unidentifiable foodstuffs, especially when it was anyone’s guess what it was supposed to be. Maybe that’s why I like a good menu now, less nasty surprises!

Neapolitan ice cream was another retro treat, slices of chocolate, strawberry and vanilla ice cream cut into slices so you could admire the strata. To be honest I don’t think the ice cream was of the highest quality I did briefly consider for my re-enactment that I should procure some Belgium chocolate, homemade juicy strawberry and vanilla seed dotted and not vanilla essence ‘the proper stuff’ vanilla ice cream. But then it probably wouldn’t really be Neapolitan ice cream. So Waitrose Neapolitan ice cream obtained, all I had to do was make the slices much thinner to recreate the slabs I remembered but miniaturised. This proved tricky as the ice cream was determined to melt instantly on contact with the air and I had to wrestle with it to obtain any semblance of the dish I was striving for. In the end I was able to cut some vague slices from my reassembled ice cream and serve them on spoons – quickly!

A couple of stalwarts of early M catered gatherings I recall were Quiche Lorraine (still a favourite of mine, sorry D but not rustled up on this occasion), a mandarin sliced cheesecake and she assures me an apple tarte thin. Though I can’t really recall the later, maybe I was more excited by the prospect of crushing digestive biscuits, stirring the resultant crumbs in melted butter and squishing them down to in the tart mould to make the base – still as satisfying as ever it seems! The minute slice-ettes of mandarin proved tricky but baby wedges of tinned mandarin topped cheesecake were eventually produced.

Whilst reacquainting myself with the various Babycham adverts kindly preserved on youtube.com I was reminded of the “I’ll have a Babycham” tagline that once uttered by a cool person would mean that it was then acceptable for everyone else in a bar to also shout “I’ll have a Babycham” I was certainly aware of it as a drink, as an alternative to Cinzano, a snowball or the slightly racier Martini Bianco that were the acceptable drinks for the females at a party. I was definitely under the legal drinking age when I had my first daring sip of a Babycham. I was enjoying a festive meal at my friend’s house and her mother produced two little bottles of this glamorous elixir to allow us to join in the toast at the dinner table. I know it seemed terribly grown up to be drinking the ‘Little Miss’ version of Champagne (and I use the term Champagne in the loosest sense) but it was billed as Perry Champagne before the dreadful might of the French Champagne houses would descend upon you in all their wrath at the merest suggestion that Champagne is available outside France and horreur de horreurs was made of pears! Babycham was advertised by a prancing, spindly legged Bambi that with its doe-eyes and endearing smile was supposed to attract the younger, girlier drinkers. I’m not sure that such a tactic would be permissible now and frankly I’m not sure the alcopop swigging generation would actually be remotely interested in such a cute drink.

I’m not sure if Babycham is still available in its little blue foil topped bottles, I must admit that I didn’t look particularly look hard and just got a bottle of sparkling perry from Waitrose to top up my new Babycham saucer instead. Well at least I had enough left over to make the cheese fondue!

For the final flourish with this being such an elegant party I thought I better get out the Ferrero Rocher. As the infamous voice-over said - "The Ambassador's receptions are noted in society for their host's exquisite taste that captivates his guests", and when the waiters pass round platters of golden pyramids of Ferrero Rocher the entranced partygoers exclaim "Eccellente" and "Monsieur, with these Rocher, you're really spoiling us" and a kitsch way to treat your guests was born. I must admit that my attempts at turning mine into a pyramid didn’t quite work so perfectly, I guess the Ambassadors staff are better at Ferrero Rocher stacking than I am. I also wanted to preserve the chocolates so I could take them to work. Being recently made an Ambassador for my team it seemed a very appropriate way to ‘spoil’ my team mates.

Well despite the best efforts of my various laptops, a retro post is finally produced. See you Saturday, enjoy the party everyone! I'll add the other guests retro offerings here when they arrive...

Update: I was delighted to see all the other guests, everyone with their best frock on. Lots of interesting and tasty goodies for us all to sample and ne'er a Twiglet in sight. I saw that Stephanie produced the obligatory Prawn Cocktail, but being a true vegetarian she has made a 'Prawn Mocktail' replacing the seafood for a shrimp substitute and I'm guessing that's not the squishy too pink shrimps some would favour from the sweet shop. The problem of course with me that even though I can take or prawn or leave it, nothing would persuade me to sample the seafood cocktail sauce so I'd be asking "is their a substitute for tomatoes?". Another fabulous party, Stephanie - see you next month!

J is for...Jam

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 US at the beginning of my holiday. It seemed to be one of the things that I was still allowed to do as the plane was taking off. I haven’t flown a US airline for years and they seemed to have added a few do’s and don’ts to the pre-flight instructions, but fortunately pondering blogging party themes in a little black notebook hasn’t been outlawed yet. This airline that will remain nameless, as I was singularly shocked at how spoilt I’ve been on my usual carrier (Virgin Atlantic) and that the infamous quote “Anything that is white is sweet. Anything that is brown is meat. Anything that is grey, don't eat!” definitely applied to this anonymous American airline as the in-flight food was shockingly inedible even when it wasn’t grey. Not that I was worried as a veritable feast of gourmet food lay ahead but honestly, a complete waste of the surly flight attendants' efforts, and that bread roll – I demonstrated how tasty it would be by bouncing it off the seat back in front of me. No, not a memorable meal and only beaten to an all time low by the even worse dross we were served on the flight back to the UK which was entirely irredeemable! But despite the complete lack of foodie inspiration around me I mustered my thoughts in the directions of how my choice should manifest itself. M put forth seafood as a suggestion as she was just hoping she’d get to partake of these fishy bites before returning home but I wanted something a little more esoteric.

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 200^o 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 200^o 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 Portugal last month. It is accompanied by six porcelain canapé spoons which no doubt will make an appearance at a future blog party.

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...