Turkey Soup for Thanksgiving Day

We had a very simple Thanksgiving celebration this year, we had slow cooked Turkey soup instead of the traditional baked turkey with fillings, lots of side dishes, and sliced cranberry jelly that we used to have because my hubby had a toothache and could hardly chew any food, so the turkey soup was a great alternative for us specially that I am a great soup eater. The turkey soup came out very yummy and tasty, no regrets. We slow cooked it for around 8 hours using a crock pot (slow cooker). Aside from the turkey meats and the soup flavor in it, it had chuncks of potato, biased slice carrots, chips of green celery and some spaghetti noodles in it. We ate it warm (of course) with buttered biscuits. And few hours prior to the soup meal, we had some hourderv, rolled salame slices with spreaded Philadelphia creme cheese.

I prepared Leche Flan as well, which did not came out as I planned because I didnt realized in that the two (2) remaining condense milks that we had were the old ones, and I couldnt use it for the recipe and most stores are close on Thanksgiving Day and didnt really wanna travel to buy the condense milks. So I ended up using cups of granulated sugar instead of the condense milk. And the steamer pot that I used, I didnt put enough water in it for steaming that it was still cooking and the water drained/evaporated and totally burned the bottom of our steamer, which I hope I can still clean and use again. Good thing that the Leache Flan came out okey, eatable, flavorful and tasty!

Happy Black Friday shopping everyone! Hope you all found great deals today (Black Friday)!

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Gooble Gooble Gooble!

Just wanna great you all Happy THANKSGIVING! I will be busy cooking tommorrow so I probably wont be able to post a new message! We are gonna have a turkey thingy and some hourdervs (hope its the right spelling!) I will also be inserting an old favorite recipe in the menu, a Leche Flan since my hubby like it when I cook that recipe, and its my fave since I was kiddo. So Gooble Gooble Gooble! (its a turkey sound...) Happy Thanksgiving!

So are you planning to wake up early dawn the following day (a day after Thanksgiving)? It is gonna be Black Friday, lots of nice deals in the stores. If you have times, I wrote an article about Black Friday few days ago, please check it out, Black Friday Is Coming Up

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The Language of Texting

Its been more than a decade since cellphone text messaging or texting were popularize in many asian countries like Philippines, Japan, China. And I mean popular, you see little kids facing each other communicating via cellphone texting, instead of talking to each other. Young students walking in the streets, texting instead of watching the road to make sure that you are not stepping on anyones shoe. It is so popular that you see signs in the road that says, no texting while crossing. Churches, banks and other offices forming new rules about no texting while in the premises.

Its recently been popularize here in the US. Only this past few years that text messaging is frequently advertised and popularized in the US, like the use of text messaging to vote for contestant in American Idol, and other contest shows in TV.

But for those who are new to texting, it will be a mind buggling experience for anyone who just receive his/her first or second text message. It is because the text messaging community is utilizing a different language, or also known as the TXT language.

The txt language is not really a whole new language but writing a word in different way to make it shorter but implies the same thing/meaning. It is almost like an abbrevation but in some cases, it is not. Below are some examples of txt words commonly use by text messaging community.

Most text words are spelled according to how it sounds like:

C U ---------> See You (what it actually means!)
K -----------> Okey
L8R --------> Later
nyt ---------> night
D-----------> The
luv----------> Love
How R U ---> How are you

Others txt words are written in initials or similar meanings like:

TC ---------> Take Care
am ---------> morning
pm ---------> afternoon, evening
Message----> Msg

It is not hard to learn the text messaging language, it is mostly the same words language (mostly English), just written in a different way to make it shorter for the purpose of being able to express what you really wanna say and have it fit in a cellphone message capacity, usually counted numbers of character per message, like 200 characters maximum per message. If you can fit what you need to say in one text messaging then, you pay one message. In the texting world, you pay per message you sent and here in the US, also per message you receive. So the more words you can fit per message, you save money.

Written by JAZEVOX. All Rights Reserved.

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Subscribed and unprepared

Few months ago, we received a notice in the mail that our airline mileage points were about tp expire, and the airline company inserted a form with magazine listings with corresponding points where we could subscribe free and just use the reward points we have as payment. So we decided to subscribe to Wall Street Journal (which I never subscribe before) without knowing that it is a daily newspaper subsription that will be mailed into our mailbox. I didnt realized until the first few week that we started getting the newspaper in the mail everyday! The funny thing is, I have few other magazines subscriptions that I never got the chance to even read for months, and most of them only come once a month. So last night, i had a stack of around 30 Wall Street Journal newspapers right in front of me and started scanning the topics and headlines. I managed to only open 3-4 out of around 30s and all I did so far was picked the articles that I wanted to read and clipped them off using a scissor and set them aside in a file so I can read them later on when I can. There are some really good articles, but it is so hard to keep up with everything, newspapers, magazines, blogging, emails, favorite tv shows, and more...Right now, im blogging...

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A Curious Mind

My new co-blogger pal, Marie, was tagged with this, i was reading her post and decided to answer the questions as well! Here are my answers....

Question# 1: When did you start blogging and why?
I first started blogging early year 2007 around February thru this blog originally called DolphinSTATE just recently renamed this November 2007 as HonestlyFRESH. I didnt make a lot of entry in between those months when I got busy for awhile, but recently managed to make few more blogs: Gardeners Land, So Cool Source, Fifty States TRAVEL, doingE, JAZEVOX in the past two months. One of the reason why I decided to blog was because I been working with computers since I graduated from college and worked as computer artists/graphics. A big portion of my life has to do with computer, starting when I in enrolled a computer course in college, since then computer became a part of what I do basically. Being online a lot of times, I discovered lots of blogs online and see people blogging including companies so I decided to give it a try out of curiosity and be a part of the new technology (blogging). I have some interests, and decided to blog about them. I also like photography and thought it might be good to share in my blogs as well. So thats how i started blogging...

Question# 2: What do you address your spouse as endearment and why?
My husband and I call each other bunny or bunbuns because its cute and sweet!

Now, here is Question # 3: Who's Blog do you admire most & why?
The first few blogs I frequently visited when I was new in blogging early 2007 are the followings: MeltingWok and New York City Daily Photo. They are still among my favorite blogs because i like Asian foods and the photographies and recipes are well-presented (thats why MeltingWok) and i would like to visit NY someday and see the place in actual and this blog is all about NY (thats why NYCityDailyPhoto) .

If anyone of you would like to answer the questions above, please feel to answer and let me know as well so I can check them out in your blog! Have fun!

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From dolphinSTATE to honestlyFRESH !!!

Hi everyone! Just in case you are wondering, the new name for this blog is now honestlyFRESH (formerly called DolphinSTATE). Same author, me (Jazevox from CA). The only main reason for the name change is that the name dolphinSTATE generally confused a lot of the blog readers. Others thought that the blog is all about dolphins, but the only thing remotely close to the name is my love and admiration for dolphins, and none of my topics was about dolphins. Because of that, I come up with a new name for this blog, HonestlyFRESH.

I hope you stick around and find interesting stuff in my blog! Currently, this blog is accessible as http://honestlyFRESH.blogspot.com

Have a pleasant day and dont forget to check out my other blogs as well. Please feel free to leave feedbacks or comments in any of the postings.

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My other blogs are now operational

I been busy these past few weeks working on my other blogs and try to separate my topics accordingly and hopefully made it more refined than topsy-turvy. Please feel free to check out my other (NEW) blogs:

FiftyStatesTRAVEL - exploring the fifty states of the United States

GardenersLand - gardening, planting, landscaping and outdoor lifestyle

SoCoolSource - sharing cool stuff we found online, can be a site, a product, anything goes!

JAZEVOX Blog - fashion sense, latest trends, clothings, whats new, whats hot, styles, and more

This blog, my first ever blog, will remain operational of course. So I hope that you will be checkout out my other blogs and come back here as well!

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Yellow Mexican Hat Coneflower Flower

I took this photo of Yellow Mexican Hat Coneflower from our yard this summer of 2007. They blooms by the dozen, so they look really nice and noticable in group.

I guess one of the reason why they call this flower Mexican Hat is because it really looks like one, dont you think so to?

These flowers do have skinny delicate stems so watering them too much will cause the plants to bow down, until the sun dries them up and usually they go stand up again.

I think they would be great as accents or touched for floral arrangements. I think Mexican Hat Coneflower would look great with white daisies with yellow pollen in a base!

Thanks for dropping by and dont forget to enjoy the summer outside before the leaves start falling and before you know it, it is already Fall!

Have a nice day to all!

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