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

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

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

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