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

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

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

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