Product

Let's discuss product. I am a product junkie. It is like an addiction. I LOVE going to the store and walking down the product isle. It draws me.

Now, as a disclosure, I do not work for Garnier or Suave or FX or Infusium 23. I am just a mom who loves using their products on my kids hair. And as another disclaimer, I use a really good shampoo on my daughter's hair. I feel like the shampoo and conditioner are the foundation of a good hairstyle, and since I use SO MUCH product, I feel better washing it out with a top of the line shampoo. You would THINK that my girls had terrible hair, but quite the opposite. Their hair is healthy and shiny and full and luscious.

First are my favorite putty's and pomades. I LOVE these sculpting ends and for making them stay where you want them to go. Pomade and the Gel are GREAT for putting in braids to make them smooth and to stay smooth throughout the day. Pomade makes my girls hair, and MY hair look the same after they have slept on it! I use whatever I feel will be the best for the style that particular day. It's just something you have to get a feel for.

Rarely, I leave their hair down. When I do, I want it to look smooth and soft. This little baby does the trick.

I do curl their hair...a lot. This is what I put on before I attack their hair with a curling iron, flat iron, rollers, whatever.

My handy, dandy cheap-o hairspray. I should have bought stock...Honey???

Water. Most styles start with a wet head of hair.

After every washing, this goes in. Including on my baby's hair.

Any questions?

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What do you want to see?

I am taking requests.

So far on the list are a zig-zag part tutorial and a curling with a flat iron tutorial.

So go ahead, request away!

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Lavender Teacake

While flipping through the stack of cookbooks that I have borrowed from the library, I chanced upon this quick & easy-to-make cinnamon teacake recipe from this book. I love to browse through cookbooks from The Australian Women's Weekly series. The recipes are simple to follow and most of the time they are accompanied with beautiful illustrations...every single photo is shouting for my attention! After looking through the list of ingredients and the nutrition information, I was pretty set to give the recipe a go. The total amount of fat for each serving is 9g, which is even lower than that of a single cookie featured in the same book. It makes me feel less guilty to bake it , as I usually won't stop at just one slice of cake.

As with coffee cakes, in the past, I used to think that tea cakes are cakes made with tea as one of the key ingredients. Silly me! Now I know, they are just cakes or even breads served for afternoon tea. Although coffee cakes are either cakes that are made with coffee or referred to as any cakes that are served with coffee, a teacake could mean different thing to people living in different regions. In Australia, a teacake is typically referred to as a sweet cake made with flour, eggs, fat and sugar. They are sometimes sprinkled with a mixture of cinnamon and caster sugar, and are often served warm from the oven, with tea. Since my kids have yet to acquire the taste of cinnamon, I tweaked the recipe a little...I left out the cinnamon and only sprinkled the cake with caster sugar. To add flavour, I added in a teaspoons of dried lavender. So, here's my version of a Lavender Teacake:

It proves to be a very easy cake to prepare. I made it with just a mixing bowl and a wooden spoon. Of course you can use a manual whisk, or leave it to your electric mixer to do the job. If you are going 'manual', do make sure the butter is very soft before you start working on it...unless you don't mind working on your biceps at the same time. I got the cake into the oven within 20mins, which was 5 mins longer than the preparation time stated in the recipe. I will have to learn to be more efficient.

Although the cake was not as moist compared to cakes made with 'moisturising-agents" such as yogurt, buttermilk, etc, I thought the taste was very delectable. The cake was rather light and I like the nice fragrant of the lavender. It's just a little on the sweet side for me...which is mainly due to the generous sprinkling of caster sugar on the cake surface. On hind sight, I should have added some lemon zest to kick up the flavour a little.


Here's a slice of cake for all of you who have taken the time to leave me your heart-warming comments and encouraging words after I published my earlier post. I'm truly touched by the kind words of encouragements...it certainly boost up my morale, and made me see the light at the far end of the tunnel. Even if you didn't leave a comment, I thank you for taking time to read and come over to my humble blog :)

From your comments, I got to know that a couple of you have actually picked up the hobby of baking after reading my blog :D It also brings me great joy to learn that some of you had started making homemade breads following the recipes I have posted here. The one and only concern that I have is that, I hope I am not the blind leading the blind. Till now, I do not know whether I am doing the kneading of the dough correctly :')

So, what are you waiting for? Go grab your spoon and enjoy!

I mean, go grab your wooden spoon and start baking!



Ingredients
(makes one 20cm cake, serves 8)

60g butter, softened at room temperature
1/2 cup (110g) caster sugar
1 egg, lightly beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup (150g) self-raising flour
1/3 cup (80ml) milk
1 teaspoon dried lavender*

topping:
15g butter, melted
some caster sugar

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 180 degC. Grease and flour side of a 20cm (8") round pan, line base with parchment paper. Sift self-raising flour, set aside.
2. In a mixing bowl, with a wooden spoon or a manual whisk, beat butter and sugar till light and fluffy. Add in the egg gradually, beat well each time egg is added. Add in vanilla extract, mix well.
3. Add in shifted flour and milk, stir with a spatula until smooth. Stir in dried lavender.
4. Spread batter into prepared pan, bake for 25mins till the cake turns golden or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.
5. Stand cake in pan for 5 mins. Turn onto cooling rack, brush top with melted butter and sprinkle with caster sugar. (*Note: If desired, omit dried lavender, instead, mix 1 tablespoon of caster sugar with 1 teaspoon of ground cinnamon and sprinkle the mixture on top of cake after brushing the surface with the melted butter.)

Recipe source: The Australian Women's Weekly,Food We Love

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Agave Syrup

Anna brought up agave syrup in a comment on the last post, so I thought I'd put up a little mini-post so everyone can benefit from what she pointed out.

Agave syrup is made from the heart of the agave plant, which is pressed to release a juice rich in inulin. Inulin is a polymer made of fructose molecules. The inulin is then broken down either by heat or by enzymatic processing. The result is a sweet syrup that is rich in fructose.

Agave syrup is marketed as a healthy, alternative sweetener. In fact, it's probably as bad or worse than high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS). They are both a refined and processed plant extract. Both are high in fructose, with agave syrup leading HFCS (estimates of agave syrup range up to 92% fructose by calories). Finally, agave syrup is expensive and inefficient to produce.

The high fructose content gives agave syrup a low glycemic index, because fructose does not raise blood glucose. Unfortunately, as some diabetics learned the hard way, using fructose as a substitute for sucrose (cane sugar) has negative long-term effects on insulin sensitivity.

In my opinion, sweeteners come with risks and there is no free lunch. The only solution is moderation.

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How to Fatten Your Liver

Steatohepatitis is a condition in which the liver becomes inflamed and accumulates fat. It was formerly found almost exclusively in alcoholics. In the 1980s, a new condition was described called nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), basically steatohepatitis without the alcoholism. Today, NASH is thought to affect more than 2% of the adult American population. The liver has many important functions. It's not an organ you want to break.

This week, I've been reading about how to fatten your liver. First up: industrial vegetable oil. The study that initially sent me on this nerd safari was recently published in the Journal of Nutrition. It's titled "Increased Apoptosis in High-Fat Diet–Induced Nonalcoholic Steatohepatitis in Rats Is Associated with c-Jun NH₂-Terminal Kinase Activation and Elevated Proapoptotic Bax". Quite a mouthful. The important thing for the purpose of this post is that the investigators fed rats a high-fat diet, which induced NASH.

Anytime a study mentions a "high-fat diet", I immediately look to see what they were actually feeding the animals. To my utter amazement, there was no information on the composition of the high-fat diet in the methods section, only a reference to another paper. Apparently fat composition is irrelevant. Despite the fact that a high-fat diet from coconut oil or butter does not produce NASH in rats. Fortunately, I was able to track down the reference. The only difference between the standard diet and the high-fat diet was the addition of a large amount of corn oil and the subtraction of carbohydrate (dextrin maltose).

Corn oil is one of the worst vegetable oils. You've eaten corn so you know it's not an oily seed. To concentrate the oil and make it palatable, manufacturers use organic solvents, high heat, and several rounds of chemical treatment. It's also extremely rich in n-6 linoleic acid. The consumption of corn oil and other n-6 rich oils has risen dramatically in the US in the last 30 years, making them prime suspects in NASH. They have replaced the natural (more saturated) fats we once got from meat and milk.

Next up: fructose. Feeding rats an extreme amount of fructose (60% of calories) gives them nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), NASH's younger sibling, even when the fat in their chow is lard. Given the upward trend of US fructose consumption (mostly from high-fructose corn syrup), and the refined sugar consumed everywhere else (50% fructose), it's also high on my list of suspects.

Here's my prescription for homemade foie gras: take one serving of soybean oil fried french fries, a basket of corn oil fried chicken nuggets, a healthy salad drenched in cottonseed oil ranch dressing, and wash it all down with a tall cup of soda. It's worked for millions of Americans!

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Triple Twists

Sometimes I start doing their hair and I never quite know where I will end up. You can tell that is the case with this do.

I started by wetting her hair and parting it in a zig-zag down the middle.



I then took each side and pulled it up into high ponytails.



Unfortunately there aren't pictures of me twisting her hair into corkscrews, but that is what I did. I separated each ponytail into three sections about the same thickness. I smoothed some pomade on each section and split it in half. Then I twisted each half in the same direction while twisting them together the other direction. I repeated on each ponytail until I had three twists on each.



Then I took each corkscrew and pulled it up under the main elastic. IF I had known where I was going with this, I would have used clear elastics. She was playing soccer that day and I didn't want to chance the corkscrews coming undone and so the elastics needed to stay in place. Clear would have been much less noticeable.



It will look like this. I am not a fan of those ends.



So I took my flat iron and curled them towards myself.



Then I added her soccer ribbons. Which, by-the-way, we can't use anymore because they won't let us use metal. Whoops. Guess they will have to wear them when they go to pro soccer games on daddy-daughter dates. The also helped to push those out-of-control ends back.

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WINNERS

Let's see who won:

BIG SISTER




MIDDLE SISTER




BABY SISTER





Thanks to everyone who entered! For those of you who won, I will be trying to contact you via your blog, but if you could contact me at blackeyedsue2@gmail.com, that would make my insane life just a touch easier!

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