Wednesday 1 June 2011

Moving My Blog

Hey all!
I've decided to rename my blog so I'm letting you know that I'm moving!!

As of today please update your google reader/blogger to my new home:

The Sweet Details!!!


I'm pretty excited about it because when I first started I just wanted to get going so bad that I picked a "whatever" name but I really wasn't happy with it, but I took a little time now and found something I liked and decided to switch over.

I hope I don't lose any of you in the move!!

(apologizes for the blog not being as pretty as this one is right now but give me a couple of day and it will be great :)

Breakfast

Buttered toast with a perfectly sunny side up egg. It was the perfect breaky

Tuesday 31 May 2011

Baking Goal: Butterfinger Cake


Doesn't this cake look wonderful? It's made it to the list of recipes to try when I'm doing baking my way through my Pillsbury cookbook!

Check out the recipe at Val So Cal!

Monday 30 May 2011

Baking My Way: Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies

These cookies are wonderful! They are so soft and chewy and just such a great chocolate chip cookie; perfect for a chocolate chip cookie sundae! Next time I wouldn't make them with the sunflower seeds but I had to follow the recipe to truly bake through this book!

With this recipe there are 4 variations so look out for posts on that too! It's going to be all chocolate for a little while!

Ingredients
3/4 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup butter
1/2 shortening
1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 egg
1 3/4 cup flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup chocolate chip
1/2 chopped nuts or sunflower seeds

Directions
Heat oven to 375

In a bowl combine sugars, shortening and butter, beat until light and fluffy.

Add vanilla and eggs; beat well.

Add flour, baking soda and salt; mix well.

Stir in chocolate chips and nuts/seeds.

Drop dough by rounded teaspoons 2 inches apart onto ungreased cookie sheets.

Bake for 8-10 minutes. Cool 1 minute, remove from cookie sheets.

I've shared this recipe at:

Health Tip: Preventing & Getting Rid of Slip Ends


I had really long; half way down my back hair a couple of months ago but cut it off into a cute little bob. Although I love it part of the reason I cut it was because I had constant problems with split ends. I got haircuts regularly but I guess somewhere in there I still wasn’t taking care of my hair enough (I think some of it had to do with the water in our apartment but that’s another story). I read in a book (Baby Proof) the other day about doing a sort of test of beauty on women. You take a woman that’s pretty but then imagine she has horrible, puffy, out of control hair and then ask the question “Is she still pretty?” The argument was that hair is a huge contributing factor to a woman’s beauty so it’s not really a fair test. Anyways, what I’m getting at is that we all love having wonderfully beautiful hair so here are some steps to take to give your hair a fighting chance to show off and to help you really take care of it well.

To reduce tangles and get rid of split ends, brush your hair before you take a shower. While you’re in the shower, try not to bunch up your hair while you’re washing it. Make sure your hair hangs straight down, apply shampoo near the top of your scalp, and work the lather downward by gently working your fingers in a zigzag motion down the length of your hair. This will prevent tangles that encourage breakage when you brush after your shower.

To get rid of split ends, use plenty of conditioner during and after a shower. Some conditioners are good for your hair, and others aren’t. Generally speaking, those conditioners that are more expensive or found in reputable hair salons are the better conditioners. Conditioner will not only help keep your hair feeling luxuriously smooth, but it will also help prevent breakage and the resulting split ends by lubricating your hair. The problem here is that conditioners that make your hair easy to brush tend to leave more residues.

As a rule, hair specialists tell you not to brush your hair while it’s wet if you want to get rid of split ends. This is where the last two steps come into play. Let’s be honest with ourselves, and admit that we need to brush our hair while it’s wet because we don’t have a lot of time in the morning. If you did the first two steps above properly, and you didn’t bunch your hair up with your towel, you should be able to brush your hair quite easily when it’s still wet.

Don’t use hair dryers, curling irons, or hair straightening devices if you’re serious about getting rid of split ends. Anything that uses heat to treat your hair, barring “thermal hair treatments,” is bad for your hair. Instead of frying your hair on a daily basis, why not do what I do and take a little more time in the morning to allow your hair to dry without a hair dryer. Make sure to brush your hair in such a way as to spread it across yourself, exposing more surface area and thus reducing the time it takes to dry.

If you have split ends already and you want to get rid of those split ends, make sure to cut at least 1 and ½ inch up the hair to prevent further splitting. Split ends do have a tendency to keep splitting if you give them the chance. If you have time during the day, or in the evening, check your hair occasionally for split ends and simply cut about one to one and a half inches above the split end, and apply a conditioning treatment (pomade?) to the recently split end to ensure not more splitting.

For more info click here

Sunday 29 May 2011

Savory Sunday

Hey all!
Hope you had a great long weekend! (I think you readers in the states have your long weekend this weekend, us Canadians has our last weekend).

A little change to Savory Sundays: I decided to leave the party open all week; letting more people have a chance to link up, and then post my picks on the next Sunday's party (instead of just the next day on Monday). I've got a lot of exciting things for the blog that I want to do so I thought this just made a little more sense.

But for today I'll leave you with this video that always puts a smile on my face. It makes me feel like a kid again. 




Here's how it will work:

1) Link up to the link below (link as many as you want but try to link something savory if you can)
2) Grab the Savory Sunday button and put it in the post you are sharing
3) Leave a comment after you post
4) I'd love for you to become a follower if you're not but it's not a requirement :)

 

Saturday 28 May 2011

Guest Writer: Kait, from Kait Souch Online



Location: Toronto area, Ontario

Favourite Recipe: Homemade sushi!

Favorite kitchen tool: Not really a tool, but I can't live without cheese, bacon bits & green onion. They can make any dish better instantly! If I had to pick a tool, I'd say my frying pan.

About me & my blog:  I'm a girl from the Toronto area, who loves everything vintage, hand-made, fashion, photography, tea, design, gluten free, new recipes, tea and eco-friendly things. Also is a firm believer that sandwiches always taste better when cut diagonally. Blogs about all of the above… yes even diagonal sandwiches.

What do I live by: See above.. sandwiches cut diagonally ;). 

My favourite quote though is "choose a job you love, and never work a day in your life" - Oscar Wilde



Mozzarella Cheese Sticks! (Gluten Free version as well)

Hi everyone! I'm Kait from Miss Kait Online! Recently I found out I had to go on a gluten free diet. Wasn’t a huge deal.. until I couldn’t find any mozzarella cheese sticks that were gluten free! So I learned how to make my own! For all you kiddies out there who can eat gluten, just switch out the gluten free substitutes for the normal stuff. It’s a fairly simple recipe, but  be warned: it is messy and time consuming when making it by yourself. Lets get cracking! Here's what you'll need:  


Rice (or bread) crumbs
Milk
Dried parsley 
Mozzarella cheese strings
2 eggs
Rice (or regular) flour.

Put the following ingredients in bowls like so: 


Cut the mozzarella sticks in half. Take them one by one and roll them first in the flour, than the eggs & milk, then the crumbs. Repeat this process until you have the desired coverage of your cheese. (I do this about 2 or three times)

Once they’re all done, place them on a tray and flash freeze them for about 20 minutes. This will make it easier to fry them without the cheese fully melting inside and creating a mess before they’re cooked. While they’re freezing, I like to take this time to prepare the sauce.

For the sauce you’ll need a can of tomato paste, finely chopped onions, 1 clove minced garlic, oregano, basil, salt & pepper, sugar, ¼ water, 1tbsp olive oil and garlic salt. Combine all the ingredients in a pot and warm. The sugar is to take out the acidity of the tomato paste, generally 2 pinches does the trick.

Once the sticks are nice and cold, its time to fry them up! Fry them in some sunflower oil (canola or olive oil works as well) until they are golden brown. I typically refreeze some of them after they’re cooked. I reheat them in the oven at 350F for about 10 minutes for a quick snack. You can eat them when they are right off the pan as well!


How good do these look?! You can use this method on so many different things, veggies (its great for onion rings), fish, whatever you can think of! As someone who can’t eat gluten it’s a really handy recipe to have. And of course, like everything else in life they taste great with a martini ;). Enjoy!

Kait.




Interested in being a guest writer? I'd love to have you! Click here for all the info!! The more the merrier!