I should Change the Name of my Blog

Really starting to feel like I should change the name of this blog to “epic food failures”. I will tell you why in a moment.

I think that we as humans have become complete creatures of habit. Can you imagine living in the Stone Age, where you don’t just need to start the fire to cook the chicken? You need to hunt the chicken, and do all the nasty things leading up to having a raw chicken to place on the fire.

In today’s world that is completely unheard of- even if you went hunting yourself chances are you enlisted an abattoir or butchery to prepare the meat into the cuts that you would like.

This past Friday night, was one such night where we longed for the creature comforts available so readily pre-virus and now so restricted that it becomes a constant reminder of our current ‘new normal’ situation.

I had seen during the day that the Mc Donald’s in our area was finally online on the Mr. Delivery app, and my heart raced of excitement. I have been longing for the convenience of their delicious food. Especially the fries, oh what I would give for Mc Donald’s fries.

Pretty sure that my constantly hinting about my Mc Donald’s craving had stirred something up within my boyfriend, as well after 10 p.m. he mentioned a longing for a something sweet to drink like a milkshake.

Me, being the dedicated girlfriend that I am, and all convenient entities such as Mc Donald’s being long out of reach for the day, I set out to make his desires a reality.

I remembered that we had some Ricoffy peppermint crisp cappuccinos in the cupboard and started hatching out a plan to turn this into a delicious milkshake for my love. Sadly, a thought entered my mind, reminding me of the coffee drink everyone has been trying out since lockdown started.

The whipped coffee, the Dalgona coffee- how could I not, being the good girlfriend that I am (yeah, no ego at all) bestow this seemingly divine drink upon the man that I love?

Now you need to bear in mind that it is after 10 p.m. and I am not at my own home with all my favourite kitchen gadgets. I decided not to turn to google for a recipe, since you know I’ve seen all the videos and I am more than capable of giving it my own spin. I decide to use the Ricoffy peppermint crisp cappuccino sachet- this was my first mistake. My second and in hindsight I think really obvious mistake, was to use our sweetener tablets instead of actual granulated sugar. My third mistake, and this was my most physically painful mistake, was not knowing that there was not an electric mixer in the house. I still have some level of tennis elbow in my shoulder, or maybe it is just PTSD from my failed attempt.

I emptied the sachet into a bowl, added the sweetener tablets (still want to facepalm at the thought), and then added the two tablespoons of hot water. Okay, it was probably a bit more than two tablespoons since I had the spoon over the bowl and poured over the spoon messing off the sides quite a bit. I then started to attempt to mix this with your ordinary run of the mill whisk. You know the one where you need to use your wrist and shoulder to operate. Now the recipe says that with an electric mixer it should take about 3 – 5 minutes to turn into the fluffy texture required for the coffee mix to stay on top of the milk and not just blend into the milk. Considering that at the time I had not yet consulted the recipe, can you imagine what the elbow grease time scale comparison to 5 minutes with an electric mixer would be? I didn’t find out, I tell you what it’s not – it’s not a half hour of mixing vigorously. Wonder how I know? I tried!! After half an hour of mixing rapidly by hand and adding two tablespoons of granulated sugar and two tablespoons of instant coffee I still just had a watery liquid. By this time, it was after 11p.m. and luckily for us my boyfriend’s parents stay on the property and would still be awake. At this point I pleaded with my boyfriend to ask his mother who used to be a baker if I could borrow her electric mixer. She naturally agrees, I mean who wouldn’t? How desperate do you have to be to ask for a mixer at 11 pm. I mixed with the electric mixer for what felt like forever, and still no change. A sticky smooth coffee resembling liquid is all I had. I gave up! I threw some ice into one of our Krystal whisky glasses, poured it three quarter full with milk and added the sticky coffee mix at the top. I don’t know why I was still hoping but it didn’t float like all the videos, it sank right to the bottom. I gave it to my boyfriend and prayed that it would satisfy his craving for a sweet cold drink. He said that it did, but still now I am sceptical if he wasn’t just trying to be nice after seeing the frustration in my eyes.

Being the tough cookie that I am, the next morning I got right back on the horse and tried again. This time actually following the recipe to the T and set an alarm (yes, I know so geeky) for the amount of time to mix. Thankfully I still had the electric mixer with me, and this time it was absolute perfection! Leaving some counter tops messy and sticky of course, but how else do you enjoy the experiments in the kitchen?

I’m pleased that in the end I accomplished my goal, want to attempt Dalgona milo next and possibly home made cocoa hot chocolate – good luck to the kitchen. I do get frustrated at my kitchen mishaps, but at the same time I think that’s what gives the best flavour to my food and drinks.

Don’t let your flops discourage you but rather see them as an adventure.

Jo xo

Jo’s Take Away’s

Don’t be hasty
Make sure you have the necessary tools
Check the recipe, just in case!

As always find the photos on instagram @imjoxo

The Final Flavours and my Personal Favourite

I hope you’ve been waiting in anguish since my last post to find out which one of the final three came out on top as my personal favourite flavour of Beanies coffee.

I wish this upon you only for the reason that I had to wait almost two weeks to try the Creamy Caramel flavour, which I assumed would arise as my number one.

Sadly, this was not the case. The caramel smelt amazing but to my disappointment it tasted very generic. It smelt a lot more like the yummy caramel that I was expecting than it tasted.

So sadly my taste buds and heart were let down by the Creamy Caramel coffee which I waited two weeks to enjoy.

All hope was not lost however, I found two real gems in-between. I was so shocked at one of the two that I so much enjoyed since I don’t even like this taste in general.

Ginger Bread!!! I am so completely shocked, I don’t like ginger at all. Except maybe a bit with my sushi. I don’t eat ginger cookies, I don’t drink ginger ale- nothing!

Yet the ginger bread flavoured coffee made it to my top two, I actually ended up not only drinking mine but my boyfriend’s ginger flavoured coffee too!

My favourite however, was the…wait for it…

Cookie dough flavour! I was very impressed with this flavour! It was so good, creamy and yummy. A friend of mine who also tried the Beanies coffee was asking me about my flavour journey and mentioned that he didn’t like the cookie dough so I guess it’s not for everyone.

I really enjoyed this adventure through the flavours especially since it was the only kind of adventure I could have while our country is on lockdown!

I’m looking forward to the day I can go to a restaurant again, and buy some wine!

Please Stay Safe!

Jo xo

Jo’s Take Away’s

When you buy a low calorie coffee expect it to taste as such
Be a little open minded
Always make the best of tough situations

Baked Potato Boats

I think most of us are in lock down around the world. For me this is quite frustrating as I am 100% an extrovert. Don’t get me wrong, I understand and fully agree with our government’s decision to keep us inside, and I am very thankful to have some time to get back to my blogging again.

I decided to spend the 3 weeks of lock down at my boyfriend’s house- don’t think I would’ve survived three weeks without him. This being said, his kitchen is not without uhm challenges.

At my house I have a gas stove and oven, and at his place everything is electric. If you have ever used an electric stove you know that it takes time to build up heat whereas with a gas stove the heat is immediately there.

This presented quite the challenge for me with our dinner this past Friday, making baked potatoes in the oven.

In my gas oven it would take 20 – 25 minutes for baked potatoes to be completely cooked, in his electric oven after an hour the potatoes were only mostly cooked.

Since we are in lock down I have some extra time on my hands so I decided to try some new ideas out (well at least new to me- ideas I haven’t tried yet.)

Friday night baked potato boats had won the lucky “what’s for dinner” question.

What are baked potato boats you may ask? A mash up between baked potatoes and mash, excuse the pun.

Step 1: You cut the potatoes in half and bake them in the oven until the skin is nice and crispy and the inside is thoroughly cooked and soft;

Step 2: Scoop out the inside of the potato into a bowl that you have ready and try to keep the skin of the potato intact.;

Step 3: Mash the potato insides together, I use some baking powder and milk to make my mashed potatoes fluffy and creamy, and added some cream cheese to add some delicious flavour;

Step 4: Make bacon (if you want to add some awesomeness to your boats);

Step 5: Add the bacon to your mashed potato mix;

Step 6: Scoop the mash potato mix into the skins of the potatoes which are hopefully still intact (I did not succeed in all of mine being intact);

Step 7: Grate some cheese;

Step 8: Sprinkle cheese over the “boats”;

9: Microwave the boats for 30 seconds (till cheese melts);

10: Enjoy the deliciousness.

The baked potato boats were absolutely delicious and filling. I used two large potatoes per person, so we ended up leaving some in the microwave. Not the best idea when milk and cream cheese are involved. I think the baked potato boats would be better the next day if kept in the fridge and not the microwave.

Jo’s Take Away’s:

Use lock down wisely
Make sure that there is no dairy in the product before putting in the microwave over night
Familiarize yourself with the equipment beforehand

The Best Pork Chop You’ll ever eat

One of my friends introduced me to two YouTube channels about cooking. The one I absolutely love and will try some of the recipes out at a later stage and blog about it.

The other annoys the living daylights out of me! The show is you suck at cooking.

This show annoys me since the guy makes a farce out of cooking to an extent. It’s like someone who can sing who sings false on purpose. I see cooking as an art and those of you who read my blog often know that I’m not always the greatest at it. I think that’s why this channel frustrates me so much, I try hard to be good at cooking and this guy is bad on purpose!

So in my annoyance after the candy apple video on this channel my friend convinced me to watch one more video – I don’t regret it. It was about butternut (I know this post is supposed to be about pork chops- just give it a minute or two).

So in the video the guy cooked butternut two different ways, I can only actually remember the one method. The method that changed the way I see pork chops.

He took melted butter & maple syrup, poured it over raw butternut and baked it in the oven. In the video this doesn’t really come out great. It did give me an idea though.

I have recently been trying to eat a bit healthier hence I didn’t have syrup in the house- only honey.

I decided to make melted butter and honey butternut, this on its own however is not a meal. Hence, I decided to have pork chops with it. I made the butternut on a baking tray, I sliced butternut and placed it on the tray to have the melted butter & honey mixture poured over it. I decided to cook the pork chops in the same baking try as the butternut as to use less dishes.

As I poured the melted butter mixture over the sliced butternut it made its way to the pork chops too. I left it like that and popped it in the oven. Never would I have guessed how soft those chops would come out of the oven.

I spiced the chops before I cooked them with some different variations of meat spice so they had an underlying salty taste with the sweetness of the honey. It was delicious.

I had some left over which I had for breakfast the next morning, it didn’t taste as good as it did the previous evening. I think this is one of those dishes that you need to consume right as it comes out of the oven.

The butternut was a bit bitter though strangely enough, next time I will sprinkle some cinnamon and sugar over the melted butter & honey butternut!

Love Jo xo

Jo’s Take Away’s

Don’t be too quick to judge
Be willing to take risks
From strange combinations come amazing taste sensations

Something Cheesy about Loaded Fries

Mc Donald’s recently had a promotion/limited edition item on their menu – chilli cheese fries. I originally saw an ad for these fries on Facebook, an ad with a very enticing picture attached that is!

These fries have actual jalapeno slices in them! I knew that I absolutely had to try them.

Early one Monday morning my boyfriend and I set out to try these chilli cheese fries- boy was it worth it! We were up and about at 6 a.m. for reasons not worth mentioning but it was freezing!

I was actually in my pyjamas so was quite thankful that such a thing as drive-thru’s exist!

The chilli cheese fries consisted of the amazing mc dees chips with cheese sauce, jalapeno pieces and drum roll please- jalapeno sauce!

Now if you know me you would know that I don’t very often eat things that burn, I have a list of less than 10 things that I eat which are spicy. One of these things happens to be the jalapeno burger at McDonald’s. The fact that they added this sauce to the chips just put it over the top for me.

The warmth of the chips sent our stomachs into absolute heaven! It was a little bit too spicy for me though, extremely delicious but very burny! I regretted not ordering a milkshake with this dish!

A few weeks later we decided to visit one of the local Burger Kings in Port Elizabeth. On their menu we noticed loaded fries i.e. chilli cheese fries. These fries had cheese sauce and jalapeno slices, sadly no jalapeno sauce though.

These chips were amazing, they tasted delicious and didn’t burn too much (well actually it was more like I could handle the level of spice). I really enjoyed these chips- I could handle them!

I must say in comparing the two, the McDonald’s chilli cheese fries wins, it’s the better dish. I personally prefer the Burger King fries though as I could handle them. If you like a slight spice to your food I would suggest Burger King loaded fries. If you prefer like you had just battled a dragon in your mouth than the McDonald’s chilli cheese fries are waiting for you to give them a try!

One thing that I didn’t expect with both dishes was that the jalapeno slices would be refreshing. They have a burn to them yes but they had a very fresh taste to them. I would eat raw jalapeno again any time!

May you find your favourite chilli cheese fry! If you feel there are more chilli cheese fries that need to be tried let me know in the comment section!

Love Jo xo

Jo’s Take Away’s

Don’t be scared to try something new
Know your limits
Find that which you like

Mc Donalds

Burger King

Mc Donalds

Review of American Diner/Grillers

If you have ever had a girlfriend you would know how important it is to keep her fed. I apologised to my boyfriend yesterday at the restaurant when we went there for lunch since I will never be the girl that only orders a salad.

That being said he picked the perfect place for us to stuff our faces! American Diner (also known as Grillers) in Newton Park- just thinking back to the food I feel full!

They have such friendly service, even the car guard was super friendly!

Grillers has regular specials as well as specials for each day of the week. My boyfriend and I opted to order from the daily specials. He chose the monkey gland burger and I had the chicken schnitzel. Our plates were overflowing with food. We decided to have water with our meals until I saw the alcoholic drinks menu that is.

The lady had already brought our water to the table, and I did some vivid hand gestures and accidentally knocked over my entire glass of water. I decided to save myself from the embarrassment a little bit by saying that when I noticed there was alcohol I realised I didn’t need the water anymore.

I was really blown away by their prices on the alcohol, less than R15 per glass. I had a glass of semi-sweet white wine and it was actually quite a nice wine. The wine tasted much better than I expected for that price.

I barely had my first sip of wine before our food was brought to the table, I expected a much longer wait as they make a comment on the menu that the food might take long.

The food was delicious, we both opted for veggies with our meals, green beans & pumpkin. Wow was it delicious! In my dish I got two large pieces of chicken and ended up giving most of the one piece to my boyfriend. It was really way too much food I do think, though it is part of the novelty of Grillers to receive such large portions. My boyfriend had me taste the sauce on his monkey gland burger, it tasted almost like a barbeque sauce with some added sugar – a bit too sweet for my taste.

I still can’t believe we did this, but we had dessert on top of our way too much food lunch. My boyfriend and his brother discovered long ago that you can order a waffle with bar-one sauce even though it isn’t on the menu.

It was amazing, we opted for cream & ice cream on this bar-one sauce waffle! It was thoroughly enjoyable although it was quite sweet, the ice cream did a good job of breaking the sweetness. I must say we waited longer for the waffle than we did for our food.

My biggest criticism is that it’s too much food but that’s why take aways exist. I promise this is a non-biased review, and if you don’t believe me please go check them out for yourself!

Oh yes I almost forgot our bill (before tip) was about R196, that’s for lunch & dessert (although we shared the waffle) for 2 people! Definite value for money!

Jo’s Take Aways

The right person will love you as you are, huge appetite and all
Be mindful of your actions in a restaurant
Even though dessert goes to the heart, make sure you have space!

Remember to follow @imjoxo on Instagram!

Sushi Search Part 2 (long awaited)

IMG_20190726_164850 So if you’re a frequent follower of my blog you’ll know that I tend to be slightly more budget conscious than most.

Sadly there is not a single place that sells sushi in the town where I stay- we used to have an Ocean Basket but sadly they closed down. I have a feeling my superior consumption of their delicious bread may have contributed to their closing.

Whenever I wish to consume sushi there is always other costs like the travel costs to get to whichever establishment I intend on consuming sushi at. Therefore for this review I went to the closest sushi place only one town over.

Despatch SuperSpar – yes they are a supermarket but they have an amazing sushi chef on staff.

Friday afternoon I decided to treat my friend and myself to some delicious sushi. I was very surprised when I walked into Spar at about 14:30 that the sushi chef was on lunch. Strange timing – month end weekend, just as the schools have come out. I don’t pretend to know how their scheduling works though- just found it odd.

Luckily there was some sushi in the fridge! I ended up getting two trays of salmon packed sushi! I have always wanted to try Graca wine with sushi (I think this might have been inspired by the John Dory’s ad) and decided this was the day! The wine was amazing with and without the sushi – tasted similar to champagne but better.

To my surprise the wine was on special for R38.99 at TOPS so I was over the moon. I ended up buying R160 worth of sushi and R40 of wine. So the food and drink cost me R200 and the fuel R50. So sushi for two people worked out to be R250.

When I finally got to my friend’s house later that afternoon I realised that I had forgotten to take chopsticks. This made for a very interesting finger food experience, I don’t like getting my hands dirty so luckily my friend did offer me a set of chopsticks she had at home.

The sushi itself was delicious! I would have preferred more mayonnaise on some of the items, like the salmon roses but sadly since the chef was on lunch I wasn’t able to get extra mayo. I must say only one of my pieces of sushi broke and that was more my error than anything else. I would also have loved to get some sashimi but once again could only get what was available on the shelf.

There is a definite level of convenience being able to get some take away sushi just one town over, but also has its drawbacks like the chef being on lunch.

I would buy sushi there again, as it’s the closest sushi place to me and is really affordable. Sometimes it pays to stay home.

May you find delicious & affordable take away places in your life!

Love Jo xo

Jo’s Take Aways

Know when the chef goes on lunch
You don’t need to spend a boat load of money for something great
When wine goes on special buy lots!

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 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