The Pizza that had too much to live up to

IMG_20190707_182043 So if you’ve been following my recent blog posts you would know that I now have someone in my life. So my boyfriend (yes I love saying that) had for weeks been telling me about this Nachos pizza at San Fernando’s since he knows that I love avocado!

He has been telling me how amazing this pizza is, and I really couldn’t wait to taste it. Finally the day came when we decided to go out for dinner to have this nachos pizza that he has been bragging about.

I must say the service at San Fernando’s at Sunridge Village is amazing, very friendly and very quick as well.

I had the most amazing bar-one hot chocolate and that I would recommend to absolutely everyone. IMG_20190707_180946

The pizza came (quite quickly may I add) and it looked amazing, except when you bear in mind that my boyfriend thought I would enjoy this pizza because I love avo and you notice that here is only a small dollop of guacamole on every slice. I ignored this though and dived into what mostly looked like an amazing pizza.

My boyfriend’s brother joined us for the pizza and to my happiness didn’t eat avo so most of his gaucamole came to me…yay!

The first bite of the pizza was delicious, but on the next bite something tasted a little floury or doughy maybe. At first I couldn’t place it but later realized some spots of the pizza’s base didn’t completely cook through.

I’m not a large fan of tomato flavoured things so I think I’m slightly biased on this next point, but as the nacho base on top of the pizza base they use tomato flavoured corn chips. The taste is also a bit dry which might have added to the floury taste and also the tomato taste kind of overpowered the rest of the pizza.

We opted for the plain pizza as I am asthmatic and need to be very careful of things that are too spicy, but the pizza came across a bit bland. I would have enjoyed it if the pizza was slightly tangy. I mean yes, when I eat spicy things I get to a point where I would just as well sell my birth right for a glass of water but with this pizza I thought I would sell my birth right for a little bit of spice.

They only have the plain option and the spicy option on the menu- I would definitely recommend that they add a mild version of the nachos pizza on the menu and if they do I would give it a try for sure!

I think at some point during consuming the pizza my facial expression must have changed since my boyfriend felt it necessary to express that he forgot that I critique food.

I would just like to say that I might not have enjoyed the dish but I did enjoy the place! They have some amazing specials and are worth checking out!

Love Jo, xo

Jo’s Takeaways:

There is no such thing as too much avo
Plain doesn’t have to mean tasteless
Don’t oversell a dish

The Unicorn Cake

Earlier this year I made the decision to be the cool aunt to my friend’s kids as I’m in mid-twenties and not close to having kids yet. I absolutely love children, love to spoil them but also love to be able to give them back when they cry or have a dirty diaper!

So one of my best friends has a daughter who recently turned 10! Her mom set out to make her a number 10 cake with unicorn decorations! Spoiler alert- it came out amazing!

The process to get it done was, let’s say, interesting! She bought a box of cake mix- the rainbow variation of course. Baked a blue and pink sheet cake, and then by some magical unknown power was able to cut the digits for the cake out of the sheet cake without assistance. If you’ve ever baked a number cake you would be well aware that you’re supposed to have piece A, piece B etc and then almost “build” the number cake. Not this woman, nope she just cut the number out of the sheet cake, I’m still impressed obviously.

She then proceeded to ice the bottom sheet cake and stuck the top sheet cake on top of the icing! She made the icing with butter and icing sugar and used some gel food colouring to get some very nice pastel colours for the icing.

The previous day we had been on the hunt for cake décor items, sadly living in a very small town we only had one shop to go to. The shop didn’t have very many options.

One town over there is this amazing little cake decorating shop, called Helen’s Dream Creations I am so glad it exists as we found the perfect little unicorn horns and ears there! We did regrettably realise that we should have ordered some décor for the cake from them prior to the day we actually needed it as they were busy making unicorn things for another order which looked absolutely splendid.

At the one and only baking shop in our town we did find some cool piping bags in which you can put two different colours of icing to pipe together and it looks stunning once it’s done!

My friend added some meringues, twisted marshmallows and all kinds of fun sprinkles to the cake and it came out beautiful! (photo will be added here) One person said that it looked like a unicorn sneezed on the cake, which got taken as a compliment of course!

We also attempted to make cake pops by crumbling up the left over cake from cutting out the numbers, adding some icing to it and then rolling them into balls. They were then supposed to go onto sticks and dipped into white chocolate, however they wouldn’t stick to the sticks. We’ll still go on a mission to figure out why.

I hope you will go on a hunt to find the perfect things to decorate your next cake with.

Love Jo xo IMG-20190626-WA0107

Jo’s take aways

Make time for those who are special to you
If you are trying something new maybe Google how to do it beforehand
Find out if you can pre order things

The Challenge of Taking Instructions from a box

So I am all for trying new things and I absolutely love convenience, but I am also a self-claimed control freak and sometimes have trouble with being told what to do.

So I recently starting seeing someone and we went to the store to go get some ingredients for dinner. I was on a strict budget as I usually am and had my mind set on bacon pasta. All I would have to purchase was the spaghetti, bacon, cream and an instant sauce.

However since the person I started seeing went with me to the shop he suggested that I try mince mate. This looked ideal! I had never made it before though, but the box basically already has everything in that you need, except the meat!

We decided on a lasagne mince mate- usually I wouldn’t have opted for the meal in a box option but I didn’t want to show my control freak side just yet as it’s still a very new thing we have going so I swallow my doubt and set out to make mince mate!

Upon getting home it was time to attempt to make the dinner coming from the box. As I mentioned above I’m not always great with being told what to do, so can you imagine what it’s like for me to have to consult a box every two minutes about the different steps in the process????

I will admit there was definitely a level of convenience to having everything set out and ready to be made, but it also felt so restricting. I know how to cook (most of the time – see the post about Mother’s Day) so I felt like I couldn’t just cook- I constantly needed to check what the box said. There was also the added pressure of the guy I’m seeing watching me cook for the first time, and also in the back of my head knowing he will be tasting my cooking for the first time. What if there’s something wrong with the mince mate or I mess up the instructions and the first time he tastes my cooking it’s disgusting? I would have been devastated!

Luckily it went pretty well, even though I was slightly annoyed at having to consult the box. You fry an onion with the mince, then you add water, the pack of spices they include as well as the pasta they include to the mince and onions. That gets left to boil as you make the cheese sauce they added to the box. Once the pasta is cooked you add the cheese sauce on top of the mince and pasta combo. Lastly you add cheese on top of that and pop in the oven for it to melt. I was a rebel and skipped this step, the cheese melted perfectly with the heat of the pasta. Sadly it didn’t have that crispiness though!

All in all, it was a really good meal, and you really do get a lot out of the box of mince mate. I just have a small side note though, if you intend to have left overs the following day leave it in the pot so that you add a bit of boiling water to it to get the sauce to be the right consistency again!

Love Jo xo

Jo’s Take Aways

Don’t be afraid to try something new – it might surprise you
Make sure what you’re cooking will be good as leftovers
Get yourself some good company for while you cook!

Mid-month Budget Busters

Firstly I need to apologise for my lengthy absence from the blogosphere. I’m certain if you are a fellow South African you would be well aware that the flu going around is particularly bad. This particularly bad flu decided to chew me up and spit me out into my bed with meds that knocked me out for most of the last while and my editor got married making it more difficult to get my posts back, love you Em. I am back now however and should be bugging you with posts at least once a week!

So all of us know that (okay maybe not all of us, just those of us who are financially challenged) know that a few weeks into the month the grocery cupboard starts to look a bit bleak.

This month ours look particularly bleak as we opted to not buy groceries but rather purchase ready cooked meals from a local chef. Really well priced and delicious! These meals however are only from Monday – Friday and only dinner. I don’t know if we forgot that weekends existed or that you’re supposed to have more than one meal a day but our cupboards only had the remnants of last month’s grocery shopping to show, which really wasn’t much.

Luckily I am always up for a challenge and absolutely love the opportunity to be creative, even in my cooking! I think some of the greatest combinations of food must have come out from people having hard times and trying anything to feed their families.

Similar to how I discovered that cheap two minute noodles tastes amazing with some melted butter mixed in! A meal I’ll have again even if my cupboards aren’t so bleak!

Also a very nice, affordable and non-fattening snack to have is popcorn! You don’t even need gas or oil if you have the right apparatus (which my sister conveniently forgot she had when we realised she had no oil and I really wanted popcorn, only to find the microwave popcorn maker the next morning…needless to say I still haven’t had my popcorn).

We are very privileged to have a large 4 burner gas stove with an oven which works amazing to cook some scrumptious things – it has one problem though. It runs out of gas! This isn’t a problem when you plan and budget for it, however when we forget that we’re supposed to eat on weekends we also forget to plan for the gas running out – after all, we’re getting ready cooked meals!

So my life without gas has been pretty interesting, and so has my bleak cupboards as the combination of the two really brought out my creative side.

I present to you condensed milk chicken! Yes, you read that correctly! There was a special on whole chicken last month at one of my favourite supermarkets so I decided to buy one. Saturday I decided that would be a decent Sunday lunch- throw it in the crock pot over night and ta-da- super soft delicious chicken. I had a problem though, I usually do this with cream and I didn’t have the cash flow to purchase cream at the time. I racked my brain as to what there was in my pretty bleak cupboards until I remembered the condensed milk I had purchased (actually for the melk kos recipe I still want to try) and decided this is perfect! Just to give it that creamy texture. I put the chicken, some baby potatoes, some frozen veg, a soup powder- minestrone I think- and braai relish into my crock pot. I rubbed some condensed milk onto the chicken, added water till it was just above the chicken closed the pot and put the setting on auto throughout the night. I forgot that the chicken had giblets so when I opened the pot the next morning (since I cooked the chicken from frozen) found the giblets floating in their packet on the top of the pot – I of course found this very amusing. The end result was absolutely delicious! It wasn’t sweet, but did have a sweeter taste than chicken would normally have. Not overbearing though and it had a soft smooth taste like that which I would usually accomplish through using cream. Definitely a recipe I would try again and add mushrooms!

My last few notes on life without gas is my absolute love for the random apparatuses that I have to cook with. From my electric frying pan with which I made egg and sausage for breakfast, to the microwave in which I made mash (although I should have left the potatoes in a bit longer as they were still a little bit hard here and there even after they were mashed), my crockpot in which I made the delicious condensed milk chicken and lastly my microwave omelette maker which works wonders!

Thankfully payday is around the corner and the bleak cupboard will soon be replenished, till then I’ll let my creative side run wild!

Love Jo xo

Jo’s Take Aways

Be prepared to be creative
Have apparatuses to help
Don’t be discouraged when things look bleak, something good can still come from it

My Review Of Adulting

Adulting- the stand-up comedy show by Dalin Oliver, that is. I must admit that my heart is biased while writing this review since the show took place at one of my favourite coffee shops. I will try to be honest as possible though – sorry Gerald! (Gerald being the owner of the Agapé coffee shop, and a dear friend of mine thanks to the coffee shop!)

I ended up attending this show alone although this wasn’t the intention. My mom would have joined me to this show but something came up. This later caused me to be the punch line in a joke but hey it’s all in good fun though.

I thought I was late when I arrived two minutes to five, however it seems to be the trend at comedy shows to start late. I was a bit confused when I arrived as I couldn’t see where to pay for my ticket but luckily Gerald rescued me! My next problem was trying to find a seat- the show may have started late but not everyone arrived late and I was a bit too shy to go sit with strangers at a table. So I ended up in the very front of the hall by the rustic vibey low wooden stage on a very comfy couch – right in the line of the comedian’s fire.

I must sadly admit that the service was a bit on the slow side- I waited probably 10 minutes for the waitress to come take my order and then another while before I received my amazingly delicious milkshake. I do understand with an almost full house and people ordering food (I love the fact that you can order dinner and eat it during the show) and the rush before the show starts that the waiting staff had their hands full but it might be in their best interest to have extra waiting staff during these kinds of events though.

Before I get into the actual show, let me tell you about this coffee shop – Agapé. The vibe is that of your best friend’s living room with couches and blankets. Books and games, yes even chess! The prices are on par with the restaurants in the area- I won’t say that they that they’re the cheapest in town but they are definitely affordable and delicious. I would regularly have meetings at this shop and have never had bad service! If you are looking for a quiet spot to enjoy lunch and a game with a friend at a decent price, I would definitely recommend Agapé!

So the show – Adulting.

As I mentioned earlier, the show started late which I do find slightly annoying, but the music being played on a laptop from YouTube was quite refreshing. The YouTube ads were quite amusing- I think only one or two played at least. I love that they aren’t pretentious! I loved how interactive Mr. Oliver was with the crowd, asking basically everyone who attended about some part of their story – also teasing some of the couples which resulted in some hilarious moments. The show was extremely relatable especially being in the same generation of growing up. I did find him extremely funny, however I wondered if all his content was true – until he assured us about 3 times that you can’t make this stuff up. That was the point at which I really felt sorry for him- someone should have given this man some life skills lessons!

I think many adults might be able to relate to his show though since a lot of people also seem to need some life skills lessons!

Much love, Jo xo

Jo’s Take Aways

Be relatively early
Find out if you can order dinner
Make sure you have life skills

For photos check out @imjoxo on Instagram

3 Ways to make baked beans bearable

If you are anything like me who does not enjoy dry foods, you would probably share my distaste for baked beans. Yes, they have sauce around them but bite down into one and they’re still dry!

Living in the day and age that we are in today, baked beans is something that pretty much everyone has in the cupboard. They’re cheap and filling, even if they don’t taste great!

So I set out on a mission to find ways to make baked beans taste better, to make them bearable for those last week of the month meals.

I chose 3 ways to tell you about:

Baked Bean Salad

This is quite easy and honestly really tastes good. A friend of mine introduced me to this recipe while we were still house mates and I have made it many times since then.

So what to do is to empty the can of baked beans- sauce and all- into a bowl. Add half a chopped onion and some sugar. Lastly, add some mayonnaise and stir. I don’t have exact measurements for this recipe, it’s a bit of a “to taste” recipe. It has never tasted bad, but whenever it seems to hit the sweet spot of perfection I can never remember what the ratio of ingredients were. Works well with meals like sausage and egg or steak and chips.

Curried Baked Beans on Toast

This is a dish that a friend’s mom made for us when we were still in high school. I really wasn’t fond of baked beans but as a courtesy to my friend’s mom I decided to eat the baked beans. I was pleasantly surprised! I tried to remake it. I threw the entire can of baked beans in a sauce pan, added half a diced onion, added tomato sauce and chutney as well as some curry powder. Heat up and stir well. My bread was frozen and I’m not fond of toast from frozen (although my mom is). Luckily we had those sandwich squares from Blue Ribbon in the freezer too, and I quite enjoy them toasted from frozen. I added the baked bean mix on to the toasted and buttered squares and enjoyed for lunch!

Joxo Chilli

So I had some leftover baked bean mix and had this idea in my head to make American Chilli. When I googled the recipes for American Chilli I realised that I do not have most of the ingredients in my house and besides the fact that I prefer to cook with what I have in house, it was still a few days until payday! I decided to make my own dish. My dish is inspired by the idea of American chilli and probably similar to some that already exist. I threw green beans, carrots and split peas in a pot together to cook. In future I would put the split peas in their own pot or not make them at all. Although I did enjoy their taste though, they were sadly still hard when I dished despite being cooked for a really long time. I added some garlic to my baked bean mix. I fried some beef patties (hamburger meat) in a pan, once cooked I added some barbeque sauce over the patties. I cut up the patties and added them to the baked bean mix while I waited for the veg to become soft. Once the veg was soft, I added it into the baked bean mix. I made the sticky barbeque instant sauce from Imana (I used more water than suggested on the instructions to give the chilli a nice runny consistency) and added to the baked bean mix. I stirred well and ta da! Joxo Chilli! I made some mash to put the chilli on, and man am I glad that I did! In one of my previous posts I have mentioned that my mom had cancer, I swear the chemo did something to her taste buds. My nose was running from the burn of the chilli and she sits there not worried about a thing. I asked her if she didn’t taste it? She responded that she tastes it but it isn’t nose run bad – really hope the chemo affected her taste buds otherwise there might be something wrong with mine! Point being that the mash under the chilli really helped with the burn.

I hope this inspires you to take something you don’t like and turn it into something you would enjoy!

Love Jo xo

Jo’s Take Aways

Never complain about having food
There’s always a way to “upcycle” an ingredient you don’t enjoy
Try new things

My First Solo Comedy Show

IMG_20190521_190616 No, no I’m not a comedian! I decided to test my confidence and go to a comedy show on my own, and to top off the riskiness of this move, the show was titled “Meneer Sex en Mevrou Kopseer” (Mr. Sex and Mrs. Headache).

I saw the poster for this show over a few weeks and considered going to it. Finally on the day of the show I found myself with nothing else to do as my mom and sister were up in Cape Town.

I phone the theatre up to enquire if they still had tickets available, they were sold out – luckily they had a cancellation. I booked my ticket and asked a million questions about the bar and so forth. The person I spoke to while booking my ticket seemed really surprised that I was planning to attend the show alone. That, my dear friends and followers, should have been my first warning.

You are allowed to take your own food in, however you have to buy drinks at the venue.

I got myself some chicken mayo rolls at a local bakery, the first was sadly stale which put me off and they ended going to the car guard on the way home. Enough about food- this post focuses more on the experience!

On arriving and paying for my ticket I got led to my own table which was very nicely prepared – thank you Barkley Street Theatre! When I got there, I felt so welcome I put my stuff down at my table and proceeded to get some wine. Arriving at the bar wanting to order my glass of wine I was informed that the bar is closed during the performance, which I understand but found annoying. So I proceeded to purchase 3 drinks and have them stacked in front of me on my nice little table.

I must say I regret going as early as I did, it was the first time I went to a show at this specific venue. When I phoned to enquire about the ticket they told me that the doors open at 18:45 and the show starts at 20:00. I arrived at 19:15 and the show ended up starting at 20:30 so for more than an hour I had to remain looking entertained and not consume all 3 of my drinks instantly. Looking back, I should just have bought an entire bottle of wine instead of 3 separate drinks.

One man who came past my table, peering at my beverages asked if I was there alone and seemed absolutely shocked at the fact that I was. I remember saying “there’s nothing wrong with it!” a few times throughout the night to different people as well as when telling people I went to see the show alone. In future I would go a bit later not to have to entertain myself for such a long period of time before the actual entertainment begins.

The table behind me had two very nice ladies who asked me to take photos, in doing this I realised that it seems to be a regular crowd that goes to shows at this venue who filled the room. They all had rapport and relationship with each other, greeting each other and enquiring about the families – a real community of show enjoyers. I like the idea of becoming friends with the people who enjoy the same entertainment that you do.

So now to the actual show, the comedian – Timothy Kieswetter. The show – getting out the box you have been put in regarding your sexuality. At first I wanted to get really offended at his attire until he explained the meaning behind it. I think much of the laughter was nervous as the jokes he made seemed to be holding up a reality mirror to each and every person, making you evaluate yourself right there on the spot but also making you think even long after the show.

I personally found some of the jokes a bit crude – but only in the sense that I felt guilty about understanding the joke and even more so about how hard I laughed. At this stage I was very thankful for my own little table.

All in all it was a great, hilarious and introspective show. It touched on problems you didn’t even know you had. I don’t read much, I read my Bible and I skim over the readings for my studies (don’t worry I still get good marks) and even less do I read in Afrikaans. However Timothy Kieswetter not only got me to buy a book, he got me to buy an Afrikaans book, and more than that I am actually slowly but surely reading the book!

Jo’s Take Aways

Have the Confidence to do the things you want to do
Go see the show!!!
Don’t arrive too early for a show

What to do when life gives you bad avos

Nachos for Breakfast

“The price of avos must fall” was a bit of a mock movement here in South Africa when we were dealing with Fees must Fall- avocados are really delicious but super expensive.
So you can imagine my excitement when someone decided to bless us with an entire bag of ripe avocados! I literally squealed from excitement! These avos were huge and ripe! I almost immediately cut one open and spiced it – armed with a spoon to devour this delicious treat!
I have heard tales that there exists an avocado that doesn’t taste as good as the rest. I didn’t want to believe it, I have never experienced such a thing – until this fretful night. I wished it wasn’t true but it was. The avos tasted so watered down and they were too soft- like absolute mush! My heart sunk to my feet, my excitement about this blessing bestowed upon us vanished.
It was contemplated to give away the remaining avos, I was considering trying a smaller one just to see if maybe the problem was that the avo was too large. Thankfully the same person who gave us the bag of avos had given us a salad the following evening (the person makes cooked meals for a price, my sister enjoys these cooked meals and hence we received a salad). This salad had avo pieces in, the same kind of avos, and the taste was still there but it was different somehow. I enjoyed the salad.
So I got to thinking- if you don’t eat the avo on its own with only spices, it tastes good. Finally I decided on guacamole! I love finding recipes for which I have everything in the home, not needing to buy anything extra since it’s not always on the budget.
I found a recipe on allrecipes.com.
The ingredients were as follows:
3 avos peeled and pitted
1 lime juiced
1 teaspoon salt
½ cup diced onion
3 tablespoons fresh cilantro
2 roma (plum) tomatoes
1 teaspoon minced garlic
1 pinch ground cayenne pepper (optional)
I didn’t have a lime or lime juice, I however had lemon juice. Also I did not have cilantro or tomatoes. Here’s what I did, if you check out my Instagram @imjoxo you will see a recipe for Thai Green curry. as I’m not a huge fan of spicy food- I didn’t use the entire sachet of Thai Green curry paste in the the curry, so I added that into the guacamole. Also the avos were a bit too ripe and I had to throw a few out- I had two large avos left to use. I chopped the avos up and chucked them in a bowl, I diced an entire onion (it was a small one though). Added lemon juice, salt and black pepper, minced garlic and the Thai Green Curry Paste. Mixed it all together and man did it smell good.
You can’t have guacamole on its own though so the idea of nachos popped into my head! For this, however, I did have to purchase a bag of cheese Doritos- the only thing I had to purchase for the entire meal! I placed the Doritos on a plate and added some Edam cheese (my new favourite cheese) over the Doritos and melted that in the microwave for 30 seconds. I then proceeded to place the guacamole on top of the melted cheese. Most people use cream cheese for nachos but I only had cottage cheese so I googled the difference and came to conclusion that cottage cheese will do the trick.
I added some spice to the cottage cheese and placed it on top of the guacamole! It was delicious!!! Extremely spicy though but a good kind of spicy as the cottage cheese helped to “cool” the mouth down. When I got to the bottom of the plate I had to resort to using a knife and fork instead of using the chips as spoons since the chips were a bit mushy from the melted cheese – still amazing though!
That’s how you make nachos for breakfast out of bad tasting avos!
Love Jo xo
Jo’s Take Aways
1. See if you can find a way to turn something you don’t like into something you like
2. Find recipes that you have all the ingredients for at home
3. Make sure you can handle the spice

Magnificent Mother’s Day and Its many Mishaps

This is a longer than normal post, because I wanted to be vulnerable and share the mishaps I made and lessons I learnt along the way- you have been warned!

Most people seem to believe that their Mother is the best Mother in the world- all of them are right! I am one of the people who believe this about my Mom! In the past few years she has been through everything you can think of, from divorce to retrenchment to cancer to most recently losing her father, but through all of this she still made sure her kids had everything we needed.

So you can understand that a thoughtful gift and a small meal doesn’t feel like enough to honour this amazing woman I have the privilege of calling my mother (even though she would be perfectly happy with that).

I decided to honour and thank her with a three course meal! The intended menu was as follows:

Starter: Butternut Soup with Homemade Garlic and Cheese Pot Bread

Main: Shepherd’s Pie, Homemade Feta and Tuna Puffs, Filled Gem Squash and Pumpkin Fritters with a Caramel Sauce.

Dessert: A cappuccino whicky whacky cake with a milo icing.

Please note that this was the intended menu but circumstance had to come and edit some of the dishes.

I don’t pretend to be a professional chef, I just love cooking but for this particular meal I think I was a tad overconfident. Thinking that I could cook a 3 course meal start to finish from the time I got back from church (after 11 a.m.) and be done by 13:30 was my first very big mistake.

I picked up my sister after church and stopped at the shop for the last ingredients I still needed, hence only getting home close to 12:00. I realised that day why my guests usually only arrive after the meals are already cooked – but you can draw your own conclusions on our family “fun”.

I started with the butternut soup – my first mishap. The recipe for this dish is in one of my previous posts (My Fav Winter Creature Comforts), however my soup came out as mush. I couldn’t understand why. Also, my supermarket was completely out of stock of every brand of fresh cream so I ended up buying canned cream. It tasted to me like the canned cream was trying too hard to be fresh cream and ended up having a very overpowering taste. To combat the overpowering taste of the canned cream I added some chilli powder instead of cayenne pepper, this was much to my personal regret later. It seemed like the chilli powder decided to be extremely concentrated in one particular spot of the soup/mush. This spot of soup ended up in my bowl. I took two bites (I don’t do very spicy things) and gave my leftovers to my mom. She said her soup was fine but could taste the bite in mine. It was only the next day that I realised how come my soup was mush and not the nice smooth soup it usually is – in my rush to finish the three course meal in way less time than it actually takes – I added too little water to the soup! I felt so silly!!

My next mishap came also in the first course! The pot bread…my first attempt at making this delicious treat. I wanted to make it over the top so I decided to add garlic butter to the top and the middle of the dough that I threw into the pot. I spoke to a friend about the menu and she suggested that I add garlic butter to the bottom of the dough too. Needless to say it burnt! So as the dough wasn’t cooked thoroughly yet, I cut the raw dough loose from the burnt dough, added some oil to another pot and put the dough in there. Still failed though- I ended up with a giant vetkoek (fried dough). I must say I believe that if I still had my trusty cast iron pot my pot bread would have been perfect besides all of this!

The next course went relatively well, except for the fact that I had done no prep prior to getting home. So making homemade feta in the time frame I had was definitely not going to happen. So sadly the homemade feta and tuna puffs wait for another day to be made. The pumpkin fritters were amazing, with the most delicious and super easy sauce! You melt butter and sugar in a sauce pan, add some milk and custard powder (I just realised I forgot the custard powder – still tasted good though) and stir. It tastes very similar to condensed milk and goes really well with the pumpkin fritters. My last small mishap with the main course was buying cottage cheese instead of cream cheese – but adding cottage cheese to the filled gem squashes still tasted good though!

Lastly the dessert!

I was googling a bunch of recipes for cappuccino cake but none of them were similar enough to the idea I had in my head. So I decided to take a classic recipe and modify it to be what I want. The whicky whacky cake is also known as the no flop cake. It doesn’t take eggs or milk, so if you’re sensitive to milk or eggs this might be a good recipe to try – before my edits though since the sachet has the allergens in again.

The ingredients are:

3 cups Flour

5 tablespoons Cocoa

1 teaspoon Bicarb

2 cups Sugar

½ teaspoon salt

12 tablespoons oil

2 tablespoons vinegar

3 teaspoons vanilla essence

2 cups water

You mix all the dry ingredients and then make 3 holes in the dry mixtures where you add the wet ingredients except for the water. Once the wet ingredients have been added you add the water evenly over the batter and then mix it all together. If it is too dry still add another half a cup of water.

I edited this recipe a little bit by replacing the cocoa with sachets of cappuccino. I also decided to make the cake moister- I would pour half a cup of cappuccino over the cake once it was baked. This was all good and well until it came to the icing. I left the cake to cool down and then added the cappuccino.

I then proceeded to make the milo icing, butter, castor sugar and some milo powder- mix them together to a nice stiff consistency and ice the cake. You need to make sure the cake is cool before you ice the take…I might have left the cake to cool before I iced the cake but I didn’t take the cup of cappuccino into account and ended up melting the icing!

All in all we still had a delicious meal and good time as a family but next time I will know my limitations!

Love, Jo xo

Jo’s Take Away’s

Appreciate your mom
Know your limitations
Let the cake cool

ps follow @imjoxo on instagram for more!

Sushi Search – Part One of Many

IMG_20190515_215636 I have decided to take the challenge upon myself to check out all the (affordable) sushi places in P.E. and surrounding areas and review them on my blog; so that you my dear friends and followers can avoid a bad sushi experience. (This definitely has nothing at all to do with the fact that I love sushi myself). The first place I decided to try out was TORO Sushi, Teppanyaki & Seafood.

A friend of mine and I decided we were in the mood to go out- sushi sounded like a great idea and I had been dying to try out the buffet at TORO. Their sushi buffet is really well priced at R169.00 for all you can eat sushi (there are some restrictions but we’ll get to those in a bit), and you also get 4 salmon roses and 4 small pieces of sashimi.

They were running a contest at the time (and I think they still are) where if you do the buffet and stack your different coloured plates, you need to take a selfie with your stacked plates and tag TORO on Instagram or Facebook to win a voucher. However when we got there we were told that when doing the buffet you are only allowed to take white plates off the conveyer belt at the sushi bar, so this was quite confusing. We didn’t enquire further though because at the end of the day we didn’t really care that much about the contest but more about the fact that we could finally enjoy this experience together.

So we were 4 friends who decided to go to TORO and 3 of us did the buffet. You can’t share with someone not doing the buffet though (let’s just say we learned this through experience) just so you know for when you go try them out! You have two options, you can either take sushi off the conveyer belt (white plates only though) or you can order off the menu on your table (you can do both if you want as well).

I opted for ordering off the menu as we were sitting far away from the sushi bar and I would find it awkward to constantly walk through the rest of the patrons. I had avocado & cream cheese California rolls as well as salmon & cream cheese California rolls which were absolutely divine and decadent! I did however realise that both the choices of ordering off the menu and ordering sushi with cream cheese in were big mistakes – how so, you may ask?

When you order off the menu, your sushi takes a while to get to the table hence giving the sushi you already ate time to digest. This causes you to fill up a lot quicker than you would want to at an ALL YOU CAN EAT sushi buffet, and the cream cheese being so rich also had a hand in me eating a lot less than I would have anticipated!

I was slightly disappointed by the amount of mayonnaise on my salmon roses, but luckily we had a very hard working waiter and he went to get extra mayo for my salmon roses. Thank you, Jacques!

All in all, it was an amazing experience! The food was great even though I ate less than I would have hoped, and the company was amazing.

You know that table at the restaurant that makes everyone else uncomfortable with the amount of fun they’re having? Yeah, we were that table! There was a man sitting at a table adjacent to ours and he enjoyed eavesdropping on our silly conversations so much that he bought a round of shooters for our table.

Sometimes when you look forward to an experience for a long time it doesn’t live up to your expectations, but my time at TORO really did. The food was good but the company was better, and I’m pretty sure we made our waiter blush a few times as well.

Definitely go give TORO Sushi, Teppanyaki & Seafood a try!

Love Jo xo

Jo’s Take Aways

Take good company with
Sit at the sushi bar to consume more food
Have extra mayo for the table
Be nice to your waiter – give a decent tip

For photos of the evening check out my instagram @imjoxo