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

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

My Fav Winter Creature Comforts

As I was having my first cup of Milo (a treat which I reserve for only the cold part of the year) of the season, I got to thinking about how we each have little things that we enjoy about every time of the year. Whether it be Christmas trees and ice cream, or camp fires and mosquito repellent, there is usually something special we associate with every season or at least our favourite season of the year. I thought I would share some of mine.

Obviously the delicious warm chocolatey-ness of a cup of Milo. Some people make it with milk, I however, being slightly sensitive to dairy products, make it like you would a cup of instant coffee. First you add three heaped spoons of the Milo powder and then, if you’re terribly unhealthy as I am, you add some sugar, stir in some milk and add boiling water. A comfort drink of note and if you’re feeling lavish, maybe add a dollop of whipped cream on top, or just some mini marshmallows!
My kind of famous Butternut Soup!! I have made this at many a soup night I have hosted and people are always raving about how tasty it is. I wish I could remember where I found the recipe because I can’t take full credit- someone else came up with it and I’m just very good at making it. So you have 2 -3 butternuts, chop ‘em up into cubes, chuck ‘em in a pot (I use my “stoom pot”), add water so that it only just covers all the butternut. Chop up an onion and a red bell pepper and add to the mix. Cook on the stove until everything is soft. I use a masher to get a better consistency of the ingredients. Then lastly you add 250 ml of cream- it is very important that this has to be full cream as it is the only fat that goes into the recipe. Spice to your taste- I love to add some cayenne pepper for that very slight kick!
Muscadel – I was first introduced to this delicious treat at my 21^st birthday as someone gave me a bottle as a gift. I fell in love, it is basically an extremely sweet sherry. To me it’s almost like you can taste the warmth while you drink it- best consumed in small portions to avoid it becoming too sweet or you becoming too sweet if you know what I mean…Lovely to consume while camping on a nice chilly weekend or just chilling around the fire place on a lovely night in. Some people might prefer something like an Old Brown Sherry if they’re not that into sweet drinks though, has the same effect.
Melk Kos – I tend to describe this as liquid pancakes (South African pancakes- American pancakes are the equivalent of our flapjacks). I haven’t had this in a very long time and I saw a recipe using condensed milk for it the other day. It always makes me nostalgic when I enjoy some Melk Kos- it takes me back to a simpler time. Melk Kos directly translates into “milk food”. So the main ingredient…you guessed it = MILK!!! I won’t say more on this as I will be making the recipe that has the condensed milk in as part of my Authentically South African series, so keep an eye out for that if you would like the recipe.

I hope my list of favourite winter treats has made you remember some of yours and perhaps inspired you to enjoy an old favourite.

Much Love, Jo XO

Jo’s 3 Take Aways

Consider the less fortunate this winter season
Make warm memories
Be inspiring!

Home Made Magic

Sometimes in life you get the privilege of choosing your own family where the connection feels magical. I was blessed enough to be able to choose my own brother (from another mother). We shared a house for more than a year and he now stays one town away and I miss him and having him around terribly.

He came to my town for a day and we spent it at a friend’s mother’s coffee shop. Living in a place like South Africa with our economy on a constant downward spiral, one needs to get creative! This brother of mine has always had a very unique mind and been very creative, don’t ask me how he got the idea in his head but he decided to make home-made crème liquor.

I am always very skeptical of my brother’s hair brained ideas and even asked the owner of the coffee shop is she trusted what the boys were doing.

It started with making our own ideal milk (one again South Africa’s economy made us decide to make our own). How does one make ideal milk, you might ask? Well I did at least. The answer = you boil milk!!! Okay, it is slightly more complicated than just leaving a pot of milk on the stove for an hour- that would just be a disaster!

So you start off by measuring the amount of milk you would like to use, and add half of it to a thick-based sauce pan. You then take a sosatie stick (kebab skewer) place it in the milk and mark where the milk is against the sosatie stick. You add the rest of the milk and slowly bring to a boil.

There is one annoying thing about making ideal milk yourself and that would be constantly removing and discarding the layer of skin that forms on top of the milk. Once the amount of milk once again reaches the level it was when it was marked on the sosatie stick, you have ideal milk, also known as evaporated milk. The process can take quite a while though as you don’t want to have the sauce pan become too hot and burn the milk.

So while the boys were making ideal milk and getting to business on the liquor, I got roped into helping cover chocolate coated truffles in chocolate. One would think that it’s an easy task…nope! I think with a lot of practice and some skill you could manage to always have them come out perfect. However on a first try my hands and feet- yes my feet too- were covered in chocolate and my truffles were definitely not all perfectly covered in chocolate. Luckily they were to be saved by having white chocolate drizzled over them the following day.

I have a new respect for bakers- tasks that appear to be seemingly easy take a lot more time, effort and skill than we realise! I won’t be complaining about the price of a treat any time soon!

So back to the boys and what seemed like their Dexter’s Laboratory experiment… Once the milk had boiled down to half of what it was (500 ml), they added a tin of condensed milk (sadly I don’t know how to make this at home yet) and three tablespoons of coffee. They then waited for this mixture to cool down, and according to them it already tasted sublime!

Once the mixture was at about room temperature, they added the alcohol, 300 ml of Brandy. They mixed it well and gave each of us a taste (in improvised shot glasses of course)! Indeed their creative flair and mad scientist ideas paid off and they had accomplished making a magical cost effective crème coffee liquor!

There is a magic about spending time with those who are like family to you, and to create something together in that time just melts it into your memory! My brother has inspired me to try many more home made things, first up being homemade feta cheese (goat’s cheese). You’ll have to wait for my next post to see whether I succeed and if I’ll be making tuna & feta puffs or just tuna puffs!

Love Jo xo

Jo’s 3 Take Aways:

Creativity is key
Respect your baker
Find people who love like family

A Proudly South African Saturday (Part 2)

I rushed off to the store to get some meat for the braai (yes I am aware I had just eaten a large meal, don’t judge me- I’m proudly South African and we can eat!) Finally I found a nice T-bone steak for a decent price and get absolute excited to eat this gorgeous cut of meat in an hour or two.

Food is just a pretence under which we get together, but not necessarily eat. This is what makes a South African braai better than an American barbeque, or any other country’s version. For example, one couple only brought their meat for show- by the time I left, the lady was stuffed on side dished and dessert, and her fiancé had consumed some alcohol and was so engaged in conversation that they both forgot the existence of their meat.

At a typical South African braai, there would usually be alcohol involved. The men would be at the fire making sure there are enough coals and wood so they have more time to drink and catch up. The women find another spot usually far enough away for the smoke not to burn their eyes yet close enough to hear if they happen to be misrepresented in a tale by their other half.

Sometimes, (and honestly preferably) there would be some snacks like chips and peanuts to snack on while we wait for the illusion of the meat being cooked.

There would be side dishes like the most amazing potato dish someone made for the night.

Potatoes cooked with once again brown onion soup and butter, partially sliced open with sliced onion in the slits! Definitely a treat worth a try. Of course, there was also some sweet bread- dough covered in cream and brown sugar baked in the oven! It was my first time trying both these dishes and I was astounded at how divine they were! I did find the sweet bread a tad sweet and ended up swirling it in the brown onion soup on my plate. I think these dishes saved the young lady whose fiancé had forgotten about their meat.

What I really love about braais is that you chose what you eat, you bring your meat with you and most ladies have their male counter parts cook their meat for them. Or if you’re like me, get a friend’s male counterpart to cook it! After a few braais and try’s you figure out who braais the best- make sure to always ask them because you don’t want the steak you’ve been looking forward to for the past two hours to be overcooked. Thankfully mine wasn’t, or at least I don’t think it was as I could only get two bites in after being so stuffed on the side dishes and potjie. However there is always room for dessert!

I finally understand why we usually don’t have desserts at braais because man, did we suffer, scoffing down every delicious bite of granadilla fridge tart but hoping with all our hearts our faces wouldn’t turn green for sheer over indulgence. Worth it though!

The one thing about the way too much food filled day that really brought it home for me was that food brings us together, whether we eat way too much or don’t even eat what we brought to the table. It gives us a platform to express love and kindness to one another, a moment to sit and catch up, and enables us to fulfil a basic human need- connection with others!

So in conclusion, if you want to experience two proudly South African culinary extravaganzas within a few hours of each other, make sure to stop eating at least two days prior to prevent a food overload coma and, for the love of pineapples, have an antacid ready!! Also have a heart that’s ready to receive the love of those who will become your unofficial family.

Jo’s take away

1. Don’t eat a full dinner less than two hours prior

2. If you are on a budget getting beef short rib to braai is an absolute life saver!

3. Braai broodjies are a must! Grab 2 slices of bread, butter the outsides, add some tomato, cheese and sliced onion. Spice with some salt and pepper and grill over the fire! No braai is complete without this treat!

A proudly South African Saturday (Part 1)

When one is moderately young and not specifically into spending every weekend clubbing, there are really only two respectable things to do (in South Africa, at least): braai and potjie (fondly called a pot). This weekend, I did both.

A braai would be similar to a barbeque in the American culture, and a potjie similar to a stew.

Every nationalist will claim that their country’s take on a traditional or famous meal would be the best. However, as a proudly South African woman who has never been overseas, I can assure you that our take on the so-called barbeque and stew is definitely the best!

When I was younger and everything still seemed right with the world, we use to make potjie for family gatherings. Everyone would get together from the near by towns. My favorite part would always be the dumplings with condensed milk at the end.

Perhaps I try to recreate these picture perfect family moments that I treasure from my childhood with the friends who are like family to me now and possibly that’s why I enjoy these kinds of gatherings so much.

We’ll start off with the potjie- you can read part two of this article to find out more about our traditional South African braai.

There’s something so serene about spending a Saturday afternoon with friends and their kids, helping prep food, enjoying great conversation and watching the cast iron pot cook over the fire, resembling a witch’s brew we have all pictured from the fairy tales we read and watched when we were kids.

I think the anticipation involved in making a potjie makes it so much more satisfying in the end- you smell every ingredient as it goes into the pot and change the smell of the steam coming out from the pot oh so subtly.

My friend’s husband was our chef and did an amazing job with a lamb pot!

First he sauteed the onions in some spice, then added some potatoes and later the lamb meat to the pot. He added brown onion soup mix and some frozen mix veg and fresh mushroom. The pot was only about half full with liquid and was left to steam, with an occasional stir.

The wife of the chef made some rice upon which the lamb pot was to be served and the whole meal came together, but more than that, it brought 3 generations together. We played and colored with the kids outside while patiently waiting for the meal to be cooked, which created a perfect light hearted atmosphere.

While still at the potjie, I received a text from a friend inviting me to her surprise birthday braai that same evening.

I initially wanted to decline but as both our busy schedules wouldn’t allow for us to celebrate her birthday together any other time soon, my first hosts very graciously excused me.

It really was a great start to a way too much food filled day, and it was only going to get better!

Jo’s take away:

1. Bring crisps to a potjie, it takes a while!

2. If you’re planning on drinking take something light otherwise you won’t make it till food.

3. Maybe add some dumplings and condensed milk, one of my favorite things with potjie!