Guess Who’s Back…Again

Wow, it has been a minute (more like a few years) since my last blog post and honestly, I really miss it. SO many things have changed in the time I have been absent from this side of my life. I got married, we bought a house (which is currently being painted as the photo shows) and I (okay we) have two more dogs and I have made several career shifts.

house covered in white paint can see garage kitchen window and drain

two dogs
Zoe beautiful brinjal puppy on the left and Zorba handsome brinjal puppy with white paws on the right

The special has changed slightly since January of this year (2023 in case you’re reading this in like 5 years or something), it costs R385 per couple for a three-course meal and a bottle of wine or a non-alcoholic drink.
When we went in January the menu consisted of a salad as a starter, the main course was either chicken schnitzel, steak, or hake and dessert was either homemade cheesecake or red velvet cake.
Now before I tell you about our experience and what our taste buds thought about everything there’s something you need to understand. My husband and I are not salad people (if you knew our weights you would have been able to guess that). Our favorite salad would be potato salad and lately, I make couscous salad although I’m not sure the way I make it really counts as salad. My point though is that the salad we had that night, a butternut, beetroot, and pumpkin seed salad still haunts me but in the absolute best way.

delicious salad with feta pumpkin seeds lettuce and beetroot

I intend to remake that salad as it is absolutely divine and inspired me to want to try out-of-the-ordinary salads (so please spam me with ideas). The salad we had that night made me realize it’s not that we’re not salad people, it’s that we’re not typical green salad people especially since neither of us can or should eat tomatoes.
The main course, we both had the steak and as I am writing this article I’m going through the photographs and wishing in my heart of hearts that time travel actually existed. I would love to be transported back in time through the photograph of that dish and eat it again… it was that good, my compliments to the chef, soft juicy steak, yum!

The dessert oh my goodness! I am not actually the biggest cake person; I would prefer a mousse or a tart as I find most cakes can be quite dry. I must admit 8 months is a long time ago to remember if the cake was moist enough for my liking. Still, since I don’t have a distinct memory of disdain for the cake and judging by the photographs, I am going to say that the cakes were divine, one of them had an edible flower on which I absolutely loved! It makes me feel adventurous and so la di da when I get to eat flowers.

gorgeous cheese cake smothered in a red sauce with a strawberry on top

lovely red velvet cake with a red edible flower on top

Jo’s Take Aways
If you’re in a relationship make date night a priority
Expand your taste bud’s horizons
If you enjoy something and it doesn’t harm anyone keep doing it no matter what others think or say.

Until next time

Jo XO

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

The Flavoured Coffee Journey Continues

My apologies, I intended this to be a daily post but realised one flavour to review at a time would be a very short post!

I currently have a favourite flavour, which I’ll share shortly, and a very close second which even surprised me.

At this point there are four that I haven’t had yet, three of them I will never have the privilege to try due to a sensitivity to nuts. I won’t be able to try the following flavours

Amaretto Almond
Nutty Hazelnut
Cinnamon Hazelnut

If you try any of those please feel free to share your experience in the comments.

The fourth one I haven’t tried yet is the creamy caramel- I am waiting in suspense to try this one tomorrow morning, hoping that I have saved the best for last.

The day after I had tried the double chocolate flavour, I was a bit sceptical about trying the rest of the flavours and didn’t go in with an open mind.

The second one I tried was the Irish Cream, OH. MY. GOODNESS. I was pleasantly surprised, I accidentally let it get cold, but I still drank it. You don’t understand the magnitude of this, I don’t even drink Nescafé if it’s too cold.

The only thing though about the Irish Cream is that I am not sure if it actually tasted like Irish Cream. It tasted good yes, but did it taste like what it was supposed to? That – I can’t answer.

Next, we had the Choc Mint, I guess Beanies haven’t quite gotten the formula right for flavours containing chocolate. It really wasn’t great, was a bit like having coffee after brushing your teeth.

Then there was the Very Vanilla, I had a sip of my boyfriend’s one a few days prior to having mine since we didn’t always do the same flavour. I was not impressed, it made my toothpaste combo seem like it tasted good. However, when I had mine, it wasn’t half bad- I really enjoyed it. It had a light coffee taste with slight undertones of vanilla. I think the difference between my boyfriend’s Very Vanilla and mine was that he used sweetener and I used refined sugar which we used for a few days.

The next one was the Coconut Delight- not actually that memorable, it wasn’t bad but wasn’t amazing either. I do remember the slight aftertaste of coconut though. You know after you’ve eaten a lamington and that last bit of coconut is stuck to the underside of your teeth without you knowing? You might gnaw your teeth a little and have that crunchy coconut taste in your mouth. That’s what it’s like after having a sip of the Coconut Delight!

The last one which I am going to tell you about in this particular post is the Chocolate Orange. You know that I said they haven’t mastered the chocolate flavour’s formula yet, right? Well they should use the this one’s ratios. It’s perfect! It reminded me of the KitKat citrus chocolate, which I quite enjoy. Still this wasn’t the best one I’ve had so far though.

Want to know which one was best? Look out for my next blog post on these coffees which will reveal my favourite flavour so far and if the creamy caramel could knock it off it’s throne.

To be continued.

Jo xo

a Series of Flavoured Coffee Reviews part 1

So, the boyfriend and I went on an essential shopping trip, you know for the normal things.

Trash bags, lemon juice, distilled water and so forth. We have a tendency for trying new things, and of course, as a true theology student, I have an intense love for good coffee.

Years ago, there used to be caramel instant coffee which I can’t seem to put out of my head- the search for its equivalent is ever present in the back of my head.

We went to one of the supermarkets in our area which is open during lockdown, and kind of dwelled around hoping the items in the aisles would spark our memory of what is lacking at home.

Of course, we would end up in the coffee aisle and find a box of Beanies flavoured coffee with 12 sachets of coffee in! This we had to try, so we decided to get each of us a box, sadly not the box with the salted caramel flavour though (which is one of my favourite flavours for anything).

So, with dinner we decided to try out the first one, ‘double chocolate’. I must say at first, I was underwhelmed, it seemed to have a bit of an identity crisis. Not enough coffee to be a coffee, not enough chocolate to be hot chocolate and not enough of both to be a mochaccino.

I will admit some error on our part as the kettle had recently been boiled and we did not re boil it and I am not a fan of cold coffee. Also, we only added 2 sweetener which is the equivalent of what we add to Hug in a Mug.

So I did warm my coffee and add another sweetener and then it was actually quite nice, still not as flavourful as I had hoped though. It smelled amazing but the taste did not quite live up to the smell.

That might well be because I am more accustomed to a stronger blend of coffee though, so if you are fond of the less intense coffees and in the mood for something exotic I would definitely suggest you try these!

Jo’s Take Away’s

Make a shopping list
Make sure you aren’t allergic to any of the flavours before you buy the box
Use smaller mugs for stronger coffee

The next flavour I will be reviewing is the Irish Cream, really hoping that it will impress me more than this one.

Hope you are surviving lockdown and staying safe.

Jo xo

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!