My Ideal Kitchen

When it comes to cooking, its mostly the women or the wives that play huge part in the kitchen operation. In my household, I do most of the cooking. My husband does cook occassionally but he still wants me to do most of the preparations of ingredients like dicing, slicing, etc. Having too many hours spent in the kitchen, I know what I like to be more functional in my kitchen like a huge stainless steel kitchen sink where I can easily wash small items as well as big items like pots and pans with less water spillage in the floor. I have many years of experience using small sink so I know how hard it is to wash bigger items on it.

Having a lot of cabinets for storage is necessary and plenty of countertops is ideal inorder for me to have plenty of work space to have a place to put all my ingredients and countertop appliances. I always wanted to have a butcher block countertop which will also serve as a movable kitchen island where I can easily prepare most of the ingredients for my cooking.

I like having a deck or a patio next to the kitchen so that I can cook in the kitchen and carry the foods outside for a nice outdoor meal and then later relax in the an adirondack chair and enjoy the weather.

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Whats Up With Avocado

I was just reading this blog post about avocado at Whats So Random blog saying that she cannot figure out exactly what avocado is, if its a fruit or vegetable. I personally think that an avocado is a fruit but it can be used either way, both as a fruit or a vegetable.

I grow up with avocados. We had avocado plant in our backyard, so we had tons of it growing up. We always had some uses for it as a fruit. I personally dont eat avocado on its own, but i can eat with sprinkled sugar on it. When we were young we also made homemade icecream bar out of an ripe avocadoes, we simply mashed the riped avocados, add sugar and evaporated milk, or condensed milk and freeze it, they frozen bar came out surprisingly great snack bars! We also sliced chucks of avocadoes and add it in our fruit salad with either milk and sugar, or condensed milk, or whipped cream. Avocadoes definitely have some really great flavor when you add sweetness into it!

Avocados are also great for burritos and taco mexican foods. Especially seasoned avocados with some spices added into it, they just make burritos and tacos taste even better. Ive tried eating burritos and tacos both with and without avocadoes on it, and i definitely prefer having avocado in it because it just add more twist into the flavor.

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Coffee Talk

Coffee, coffee, coffee.....for some people, a day always starts with coffee! So where do you stand in this coffee statistics?

When I was younger I hardly drink any coffee at all. My family, parents and grandparents, use the Nescafe instant coffee, we just normally just add hot water, sugar, and powdered milk, and its good to go. The younger ones, we when we were young, just had either hot choco, milk, or juice for breakfast.

Nowadays, I like having a cup of coffee to start the morning. Its good to have a nice warm coffee when I wake up... My hubby used to brew his coffee, but i introduced instant coffee to him, and he doesnt seem to mind, actually he likes the taste of instant coffee too. As a creamier, we just use a little pour of fresh milk with it.

I like the coffee at Starbucks too, but we dont do that on a daily basis because the price is not cheap to get addicted too specially if there is a bunch of family members! Buying a whole jar of instant coffee that will last for weeks for the same price makes more sense for a budget conscious family.

Thank you for visiting www.HonestlyFresh.com today!
Have a nice day, JazeVox

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Eat Fresh for A Healthy Beautiful You

True beauty radiates from within! Do you want to look and feel beautiful both inside and out? One way that work that make perfect sense is eating healthy and living healthy. Eating healthy foods, fresh nutrious foods promotes healthy body, great skin, and who do not like that?

Try the new easy grab Fresh Express Sweet Tender Greens, just add your favorite salad dressing and other desireable salad ingredients and you are good to go, eating healthy the easy way! Eating fresh salad is a great way to add great nutrients to your body because fresh vegetables are riched in vitamins needed to keep your body healthy and in great shape. With the convenience of ready-to-use Fresh Express Sweet Tender Greens for your everyday fresh salad, there is no excuse not to eat healthy anymore!

Make sure to check out PhyToLife.com for delicious fresh salad recipes that utilizes the new Sweet Tender Greens.

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Happy Halloween To All

Trick or treat? It was definitely a treat when we happen to pass by this creative Halloween decoration outside Whole Foods store in Roseville. If you are interested to read more about my The Parade of Pumpkins story, please visit my blog at www.ExpressInStyle.com too. Happy Halloween, be safe, and thank you for your visit here today.

Written and Photography by JazeVox of www.HonestlyFresh.com
Please dont forget to visit my other blogs at  www.SoCoolSource.com www.FiftyStatesTravel.com www.DogsCircle.com www.HonestlyFresh.com www.Doinge.com www.GardernersLand.com

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Adventurous With Dining In America

I like dining out, although we dont do it all the time because it is quite costly to do it on a daily basis. But most of us enjoy and very passionate about great foods and great restaurants. Most of us have our favorite foods and favorite restaurants, but it is always great to explore new restaurants and taste new menus as well, to know what else is out there and probably discover new favorites! But walking into a restaurant that you never been before nor heard of before can be a disastrous idea specially if you have no clue what type of foods they serve. But dont despair, if you feel like trying out new restaurants in different cities in the US, you can now checkout some of the recognized and great restaurants in different major US cities, and give you an idea in advance what they have and the type of foods they serve, check out WhereTheLocalsEat website.

NOTE: For tips on travels anywhere in the USA, checkout my other blog, FiftyStatesTravel.com too!

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It Is Possibly The Jalopeño Pepper

Few weeks had passed that there were a major national scare salmonella infected tomatoes which lead to the pulling out of a lot of stocks of tomatoes in most grocery stores and supermarkets nationwide as well and pulling out tomato ingredients in most menus in restaurants and inns. But after awhile of tracing the source of salmonella cases, there is been a recent spread in the news that the source of the samonella cases are possibly coming from jalopeño pepper! Whether this is true or not, it is always good to be aware and keep watch of what you eat.

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Chicken Meal The Old Fashion Way

When it comes to cooking chicken meats, I always like the traditional way of cooking it, just fry it! Occasionally, i prepare chicken meats with bread crumbs and egg coating, sometimes with a brushed of mayonaise, other times with barbeque sauce in it, and then just baked them at 400 degrees fahrenheit for around an hour. But normally, when I dont want to go through all the hassle of any other ingredients, I usually just fry the chicken with sprinkle of salt. I find it best just to fry the chicken with salt because the natural taste of the chicken prevails, instead of any other flavorings. I got chicken in my brain right now, i am frying one for dinner :-)

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Melting Milk Chocolate

I am currently blogging, and my hubby just handed me a Hershey Milk Chocolate with Almonds to eat :-P We grabbed a pack of chocolate the other day in the grocery store. When we were eating the chocolate inside the car, we could see how the chocolate was melting so quickly right before our eyes, thats how hot it got here already and its not even summer yet. Its only like yesterday that we had really freezing temperatures, but these days, it gets really hot pretty quickly, specially inside the car, that is why we take every opportunity to take a shaded parking when available, even when its only a speck of shade, every bit of shade helps.

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The Milky Decision

Later today I had a quick run to the supermarket to get a gallon of milk because I just remembered that when I checked the ref last night, we were out of milk. So I had to stop by at the grocery quick to get a gallon of milk. But when I scanned the store refrigerator, i noticed that a gallon of milk is $4.49 while if I buy 2 gallons of milk at the same time, I would get huge discount because it will only cost $5.49 for two, it is like buying the other gallon for only $1.00. But at the same time, I know that I can only fit one gallon of milk in our ref tonight because it is fully loaded with all kind of foods and drinks. I stared at the store ref pondering about which way to go, buy a gallon or two gallons...It sucks when grocery stores make things so difficult huh. Definitely out of proportion to price a gallon for $4.49 and the additional gallon, if you buy two, for only $1.00 for the next gallon. Why not make it simple and spread the savings to everyone, give savings regarless if we buy a gallon, or two or three gallons of milk..

Overall, its not just the price of milk that everyone nowadays are concern of. It is hard to believe that the prices of basic commodoties these days are outrageously high. Here in northern CA, the average price of gas per gallon today is $3.75, shocks, I just hope that we wont be hearing in the news anytime soon about some companies having record breaking profits. I dont exactly know how far you can go with a gallon of gas, if you are using an SUV, probably 7-10 miles per gallon? If only someone can can up with water to power our cars nowadays, wouldnt that be something really cool and neat.

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A Two Layer Pudding Experiment

My hubby is having a toothache for few days so I have to come up with more softer foods for him to eat. Foods that do not require a lot of chewing before swallowing. Yesterday morning, I cooked a hearty recipe of one-minute cook Quaker Oats.

Today, we swing by a grocery store, so we decided to buy some Jello Pudding mixes. We always buy the Cook and Serve mixture Jello in a box, which it only needs liquid milk to add and either oven top or microwave cooking to actually prepare it. We bought both chocolate and vanilla pudding flavors.

Normally, I dont prepare both chocolate and vanilla in a day. But today, I decided to twist the recipe a little bit. I decided to cook the chocolate pudding via microve in a bowl. And cook the vanilla pudding in another bowl. Once the pudding thickened and cooled off a little bit, I filled the clear glasses halfway with chocolate pudding as first layer, and then on top of it, add the vanilla layer filling each of the glass. I just made sure that the first layer thicken well enough to be able to handle to weight of the upper layer without having both mixture get mixed.

For best visual effect, definitely recommends using a clear glass so that you can see the different layers, both chocolate and vanilla, and it looks more inviting and attractive. I actually havent eaten what I made yet coz they are still being chilled in the ref right now. Few hours from now, it should be chilled and ready to serve. Doesnt need a lot of chewing to eat it, so I hope my hubby will appreciate the effort that I have done, by eating it and hopefully liking it!

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Oven Cleaning Before Baking

I was about to bake the thawed chicken halves when I noticed that the lighting in the oven is already dark with greese residue. So I tried to grab some paper towel, dumped it with some water, and tried scrubbing the interior of the oven. But everything was sticking like a glue, nothing will come out. Good thing that the oven comes with auto-cleaning feature, which make it so easy to clean the whole messy gressy oven thingy. The self-cleaning feature is so easy actually, we just removed all the catch-crumb tray and all the racks, and press the button CLEAN. The oven automatically locked the whole unit until it is done, which is great to avoid anyone from opening the unit accidentally while it is on cleaning cycle and it is extremely hot. The cleaning cycle took around three hours total and all we did was wait for it to be done. As soon as the cleaning was done, the oven interior looked so brand new, no signs any ekky grease, whatsover, just few ashed particles that needed to be wipe off.

After the oven finally cooled off from the self-cleaning process, I started cooking the chicken halves. Instead of using a beaten egg to moisten the chicken meats inorder for the bread crumbs to stick into, I brushed some mayonaise into the chicken meats instead and then sprinkle the meats with bread crumbs. Thirty minutes before the baked chicken would be done, I prepared the Chicken Rice-A-Roni to go with the baked chicken. Everything came out perfect, it was a great meal. Cannot wait to have the same meal in a week or so. I try not to cook the same recipe over and over in successive days because it gets really tiring to eat the same flavor or recipe everyday.

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Heart Pumping Ride After A Great Meal

Yesterday was definitely a mixed emotion for us. We went to our favorite Chinese restautant and ordered a Sweet and Sour Pork and steamed rice for our meal. The food came out great and everything was perfect. We been to the same restaurant a lot, so a lot of the people who work there recognize us by our faces. During our visit yesterday, we were served by a new waiter, whom we never seen before in that restaurant. But he was just as friendly and accomodating as the rest of the crew. When he handed us the change for our bill, my hubby noticed that the waiter gave us $4.00 more! We dont want him to be in trouble with the cashier audit at the end of the day, so we left the $4.00 extra plus the tip for him in the table. We also told him about it before we left the restaurant, so he will be aware, and next time we go there, he wont expect that we are over-the-top tippers :-)

Just as was we pulled out off the driveway of the restaurant and drove to the main road, there was a bumper to bumper traffic. Then the signal changed, and the cars started moving slowly. While waiting for the cars to move, we noticed a guy driver in the turn lane, his car facing the driver side of our car. But obviously he was not aware that we were there in front of him, because as soon as the road in our back was cleared, the guy driver started hitting his gas and driving towards us. We were there right in front of him, thank God that were were able to swing to the other lane very very quickly and safely and move forward at once despite the amount of traffic there was, and managed to avoid from getting hit by the guy car and his absent-minded attitude! It was crazy why he was not aware that our car was right in his front, he only checked the clearance on his right side, not his front, before trying to turn! Grrr.

I guess it was good karma that we were spared from being hit brutally that could easily spin our car, get dinged, and get pushed to all other cars in the road, and could possibly roll us upside down :-( The $4.00 extra that we returned to the waiter, must have saved us from an accident? I guess it is good to put things in this perspective, so more and more people will be encouranged to do good or be honest.

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Grilled Onions For Hamburgers Make Sense

Yesterday, we passed by an In And Out Burger, and we just had to stop there. Its been awhile since we were there last because most of their outlets here in northern CA is not always convenient where we live, so when there is a chance that we saw one of their outlet, it is always hard to pass up, we always take advantage of stopping there. They have really great hamburgers! The one thing i like most about their hamburger is that they add grilled diced onions and thousand island dressing. And their milk shake is one of the best ever, very soft and creamy. So if there is an In And Out Burger where you are and you havent tried them yet, I think you should because I personally think that they have great foods. In addition, my hubby mentioned to me yesterday while we were there that their fresh fries are freshly prepared, peeled and sliced by them, meaning its not from a bag of frozen french fries. Bon Appetit everyone.

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Spaghetti For Dinner

Back then, having a spaghetti as an everyday meal is not be common for us and we never have spaghetti on a regular basis. We usually just have spaghetti during special occassion like birthdays, New Years Day, or Christmas day because for a lot of time we are more on the egg noddles, chow mein, and pancit type eaters. Although, I used to order a lot of spaghetti combo in Wendys, McDonalds, and or Jollibee fast foods for a quick meal. But since I got married, I been cooking a lot of spaghetti, not in the usual way, though. Before, when I cook spaghetti I always do it from scratch like have fresh onions and other spices as well using some fresh tomatoes and canned tomato sauce. This time, I usually cook spaghetti using bottled spaghetti sauce like the ones made by Prego, and the ones you can buy in Walmart, too. And add some canned sliced mushroom in it, if no fresh mushroom is available in the ref. And one of the things I truly like that works really great with spaghetti is garlic bread! I cant believe all those years that we been eating spaghetti without any garlic bread, because spaghetti and garlic bread definitely compliment each other really good. I just done eating a spaghetti few minutes ago for dinner and it came out really yummy, so I have that in my mind right now and cannot help it, but talk about it here.

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Our Valentines Day

For Valentines Day, we went to an Italian restaurant here in our area and of course I ordered my usual favorite, Fettuccine Presto with Shrimps. The italian restaurant that we went to is new, not even a year old yet, and we been there around 4-5 times already since it opened last year 2007. And everytime we go there, I usually order the same menu, because I kinda like how they cook and prepare the whole recipe, and i always think that white sauce are so yummy. Their complimentary bread and soup are also something to look forward to, and they sure seem to have perfected the taste of the best bread ever.

After our nice italian meal, we went to Walmart and grabbed No Reservations dvd movie, starring Catherine Zeta-Jones and Aaron Eckhart. We then headed home, and watched the movie comfortably in our sofa and paused when we need or have to, which i like best about watching movie at home! No Reservations is a romantic movie about two head chefs in a restaurant, then they fell in love, and i wont tell you the rest of the story just incase you have plan buying the movie, and I dont want to ruin the thrill of what happened next! Personally, i think it is a great romantic heart-warming movie, so romantic and sweet as well.

After we watched the movie at home, we decided to make a pizza, and we just done eating it few minutes ago. Happy Valentines Day everyone, thanks for visiting my blog today :-)

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No More Free Honey Wings

One of the main reason why we like to dine in at Round Table pizza a lot is because of their unmatched yummy pizzas with quite flavorful crust plus the free honey wings appetizer that we get by using our survey coupons. Most of the time, when we eat there, we have survey coupon for six pieces free honey wings, since at the back of Round Table receipts, there always been a survey that you can call in and answers questions regarding your latest experience with the restaurant, and at the end of the survey, a validation code would be given that we could write at the back of the receipt, that we could present on our next restaurant visit to get free six honey wings, which is worth around $4.00 if you dont have a coupon. But to our dismay, during out visit at Round Table yesterday, we were told, as well as few other customers with coupons, that they will discountinuing the survey coupons and they will only be valid up to next week. We still have two unused coupons for free honey wings, and we are not gonna be able to use them anymore...With the prices of pizza, with no free honey wings, its more likely that we are not gonna be going there as often as we would like. We are just gonna try do some extra work making our own pizza at home. The receipt that we got yesterday no longer had a call-in survey opportunity at the back for free appetizers that we can use next visits, so that was a bumber.

What about you, do you use coupons that you get from newspaper clippings, magazine inserts, or call-in surveys for free appetizers, free drinks, or discount off when you go to some restaurants?

Do you prepare your own pizza at home? Or do you eat pizza dine-in in pizza restaurants? Or you just buy the frozen ready-to-reheat pre-made pizza in supermarket?

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Baked Chicken And The One That Works

I just done eating meal after an hour and a half of baking two pieces of chickens quarters. I baked the pieces of chicken for more than an hour by putting it in a oiled-sprayed glass oven-safe dish. Then I flipped and brushed some honey-barbeque sauce to the chicken meats for added flavoring every 15 minutes while baking.

Fifteen minutes before the baked chicken was done, i started cooking the Rice-A-Roni, the rice-and-beans flavored one which we never tried before. We love to eat Rice-A-Roni, because they have all kinds of different flavors available, make the whole rice thingy more tasteful and flavoreful to eat, instead of the traditional plained steamed rice that I was accustomed to. But as it came out, the Rice and Beans flavored Rice-A-Roni came out eeky for our taste, we did not like it at all. I just wished that we have Garden-Fresh or Mexican-Rice flavored instead, would have been so much better!

We decided that we cannot eat the rice-and-beans flavored rice because it was so saucy and the taste just didnt work for us. Good thing that we have a box of Potato Buds handy, which is a quick and easy to prepare mashed potato! Just needed to boil water, milk and butter, and then add the potato buds, stir and serve, viola a mashed potato ready to serve! Its good that we have the Potato Buds handy because it definitely save the whole meal for the evening! As for the rice-and-beans flavored saucy rice, our dogs were loving it!

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Pumpkin Palace Experience

The new mexican restaurant that we came to visit the other day is actually not called the Pumpkin Palace but my hubby called it that way because the new owner of the building bought the place and converted it into a mexican restaurant. Then they painted the whole building bright orange in the exterior that totally stands out in the neighborhood specially that it is located in a place full of huge pine trees, which dont have a lot of other colors but greens and browns. The new orange color in the building, definitely stands out and my hubby now refer or calle the restaurant the Pumpkin Palace.

The Pumpkin Palace has been opened in our county for quite sometime now, and the other day was the first time that we finally decided to give their food a try, since we hear a lot of great feedbacks with their foods from friends and acquaintances. I am personally not the best fan of mexican foods because I had terrible past experieces with mexican foods in some of the mexican restaurants that we visited in the past. But I am glad that I tried to be open and gave the Pumpkin Palace foods a try. They actually serve some great tasty foods. My hubby ordered a Beef Steak Chille which totally reminded me of my mothers Beef Steak recipe that she used to cook for us with beef slices and lots of onions on it. The Pumpkin Palace dont have the cheapest prices per serving, so we will only be going to the Pumpkin Palace occassionaly, but we are definitely going back there again.

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Seafood Extravagansa

I never got the chance to post about our special dinner we had few days before Christmas Day, but my Hubby surprised me with an Eat-All-You-Can Seafood Buffet in one of the little-bit-expensive restaurant in our area. He told me that it was gonna be an advance special dinner celebration for us for Christmas. We usually dont go to expensive restaurants on a daily basis because that would definitely kill our budget, but of course once in awhile, we like to go out, explore, and savor the taste of some (overprice) foods, roam around and enjoy the evergrowing neighborhood.

During the night out, the restaurant specialty for the night was Seafood Buffet. And I think my Hubby tried to timing the seafood buffet because he knows how much I love seafoods, but never got the chance to eat as much as I used to anymore since we got married because he does not like seafood, and with that I dont like to prepare two separate meals everyday. So I seldom cook seafood in our household, and maybe that is one of the reason why he brought me to the seafood buffet dinner, and let me enjoy some of my favorites!

There were all kinds of menu in the buffet, probably twenty (20) different variety of seafoods. There were shells, crabs, shrimps, salmon, and other foreign sounding recipes. I tried to grabbed as much as I can with the price that we paid for per person. But there was only so much that I could take and eat in a single meal. I was only able to make two (2) trips and/or two (2) mounting plates of seafood in the serving area. I should have not grabbed the soup and crackers, I would had been able to grab more of the crabs and shrimps!

After having two plates of seafood extravagansa and a glass of cold Sprite softdrink, i went to the dessert area and had pieces of bread pudding, peach and grape fruit cobbler, a lemon gelatin, and a warm cup of coffee. The dinner came out very satisfactory and memorable, and we had a great time.

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