The Best Heat Protectant Sprays
R+Co Bleu Hypersonic Heat Styling Mist for $36: This high-tech-looking aerosol in a recycled aluminum bottle was a favorite during the early weeks of testing—I liked its protection up to 450 degrees Fahrenheit and its frizz-fighting properties. However, it does use a polymer and resin complex to smooth hair, and over time I noticed it was leaving a sticky residue on my hands and heat tools.
Briogeo Farewell Frizz Blowdry Perfection & Heat Protectant Creme for $12: I have thick, unruly hair, and this cream protectant felt like it actually made my hair unmanageable and harder to style. It may speak to its effectiveness, but I felt like I had to take too many passes with a titanium flat iron turned up to max temperature.
IGK Good Behavior Spirulina Protein Smoothing Spray for $34: This aerosol felt like it dried my hair out a bit, and it has the same unpleasant scent as the 4-in-1 (above). I didn't care for it in a liquid spray, but it was overwhelming in aerosol cloud form.
Reverie Milk Anti-Frizz Leave-in Nourishing Treatment for $44: I loved this lightweight cream's spicy botanical scent, stylish glass bottle, and the fact that it protects up to 450 degrees Fahrenheit (according to Reverie; it does not say so on the bottle). Unfortunately, it did absolutely nothing for my frizz.
Sutra Heat Guard Heat Protector for $18: Imperceptibly scented and light, this pump spray seemed promising for use on dry hair, but it had the same issue as Briogeo's Farewell Frizz—even after multiple passes at high temperatures, my hair was unmanageable and would not cooperate with the flat iron.
Chi 44 Iron Guard for $19: This drugstore stalwart works well to protect from heat while also tamping down frizz, and the new Botanical Bliss scent is an improvement over the original formula's. However, it left a sticky residue on my hands and heat tools.
Sutra Heat Guard Blowout Cream for $24: I love Sutra's IR2 hair straightener, so I had high hopes for this thick and almost fragrance-free cream that's meant to protect up to 450 degrees Fahrenheit and reduce drying time, but my hair felt dried out after use.
Milk_Shake Lifestyling Thermo-Protector for $18: I usually love Milk_Shake products, but this aerosol spray felt like it dried out my hair and amplified my already hard-to-handle frizz after blow-drying. It also did not add a discernible amount of shine as promised.
FoxyBae Cool AF Heat Protectant + Biotin for $13: I like the cheery design of this pump spray bottle, as well as the fact it can be used on wet or dry hair. However, it didn't seem as effective as other brands and was greasy when used on dry hair.
Drybar Hot Toddy Heat Protectant Mist for $28: This keratin- and paraben-free aerosol spray was quite pleasant to use for touch-ups, but it was just a little too lightweight to have any real effect on frizz.
R+Co Chainmail Thermal Protection Styling Spray for $36: I appreciated this spray for its ability to add lots of visible shine, but the aerosol nozzle was not as targeted as I'd have liked, creating such a wide-ranging, fine-mist fog that it was nearly impossible not to breathe it in. I also found the cologne-like scent overwhelming.
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CNET
a day ago
- CNET
This One Steak Hack Will Make You the Grill God of Every Cookout
Grilling season is in full swing, and nothing impresses a crowd like a perfectly cooked steak. The challenge? Nailing that sweet spot between overdone and undercooked. Too long on the grill and you end up with something dry and chewy; too short and you're serving raw in the middle. With the right timing and a couple of easy tricks, you can serve up steaks that are juicy, tender, and cooked exactly the way your guests like them-every single time. So if you're manning the grill today, here's how to nail your steak and impress your guests without breaking a sweat. To get the inside scoop on how pro chefs measure doneness of ribeye, strip or flank, I spoke to Joe Flamm, chef-partner and culinary director of Chicago's BLVD Steakhouse. "Doneness is such a preference and everyone has their own," he said. "For something as simple as steak, prepared with just salt and fire, you want it exactly how you want it." We love using a meat probe for checking the temp on larger cuts of meat, chicken and other foods, but this gadget-free method works on steaks and burgers and saves you from having to pull out the thermometer. Here, we unpack a simple trick for testing steak doneness using only your hands, guaranteeing you'll nail it every time. Read more: A Beef Expert Told Me the Best Cheap Steak Cuts to Look for at the Market Practice makes perfect Fancy meat thermometers do a nice job at reading internal temps, but you can save some money and learn to test doneness like the pros do. James Bricknell/CNET Doneness in steak is frequently associated with color, as the steak goes from bright red when rare, through various stages of pink, until it becomes well done and has the pink cooked completely out of it. (RIP, ribeye.) It's difficult to gauge color without cutting into the steak, which you don't want to do until it comes off of the heat and has a moment to rest. Otherwise, the juices spill out of it, making for a drier, tougher outcome, especially if you're going to put it back on the fire for additional cooking. It's even more important not to do this prematurely if your preference leans toward medium well or well done; you want as much juice left in the meat as possible. Doneness is also associated with temperature, with the internal temperature of the inside of the meat typically graduating between 120 and 160 degrees Fahrenheit as you move between rare and well done. This can be accomplished with a meat thermometer, but there is another method frequently applied by chefs that doesn't require any gadgets. Nailing the perfect doneness for your next steak takes nothing more than a few pokes. Brian Bennett/CNET With bigger cuts, such as a whole prime rib roast that will be sliced after cooking, "a thermometer is super helpful for consistency and accuracy," says Flamm, but "for smaller cuts and for speed, many chefs can check it by feel," he says. "If you're cooking 100 filets a night, every night, it begins to fall into place." Understanding doneness in steak and why overcooking is bad Overcooking steak is the fastest way to ruin a perfectly good piece of meat. Tyler Lizenby/CNET What's a home cook to do who isn't in the habit of cooking dozens of steaks on repeat, many times a week? Before we get to the shortcut trick to help you learn this, it's important to understand the transformation your steak undergoes as it cooks to higher and higher temperatures. In basic terms, the longer a steak cooks, the firmer the meat becomes, which has to do with the chemical process the meat is undergoing. "Whenever you cook a steak for a longer period there's a breaking point where fat and muscle are done breaking down," explains Flamm, "and you're just drying out the steak and losing moisture, which gives the steak a tougher texture." This increasingly firmer or tougher texture is key to being able to check the doneness of steak without relying on a thermometer. Read more: I Did the Math to See if Buying Meat Online Is Cheaper Than the Grocery Store Technique for testing doneness Learning to check for doneness by feel doesn't necessarily require hundreds of dollars of raw materials to get the requisite practice. Neither does it rely on any particular gadget. It's not exactly a one-handed method, but the method only involves the use of your hands. Whether or not you have the means or mentality to quit your job and go to culinary school, here's a culinary school trick to understand doneness in meat, using the fleshy base of your thumb as a point of comparison in the resistance of the steak when poked. Here it is: With one hand, gently touch your thumb and forefinger together, keeping the rest of your fingers relaxed, in a half-assed "A-OK" signal. You don't want to press your thumb and forefinger together -- simply make light contact between them. With the forefinger of your opposite hand gently poke the fleshy base of your thumb. Pamela Vachon/CNET You're not pressing down here, just giving it a quick jab. This is approximately the level of resistance you should feel for a medium rare steak when similarly jabbed in the center of the meat. (Quick aside here about clean and/or gloved hands. Also, the steak will be hot on the outside, yes, but again, a brief jab is all that's in order.) Pamela Vachon/CNET Subsequently, as you move your thumb to lightly touch your middle finger, the tension in the base of your thumb increases, and this represents how a medium-cooked steak should feel. As you stretch your thumb to reach the ring finger, now you've got medium well, and the tension in the thumb when touched with the pinkie finger reveals well done. Pamela Vachon/CNET Regardless of how you like your steak cooked, and how you'd personally define it, now you have a consistent point of comparison available to you at all times with which to practice, whether you're cooking steak once a week or once a year. Pamela Vachon/CNET What's the best way to cook steak? Searing steak followed by some indirect heat to bring it up to the desired doneness is the preferred method of many professional chefs. David Watsky/CNET So, what's the best way to cook a steak? Opinions abound regarding direct heat versus indirect heat, hard searing and reverse searing, and even cooking steak in an air fryer. Flamm recommends a time-honored method: "For me, it's searing the steak hard, and then using indirect heat to slowly let it render and come up in temp to the place where you want it to be," he says, finishing your seared steak in the oven. You can consult various recipes for time and temperature recommendations with the indirect heat method, just be sure to factor in that your steak will continue to cook while resting, and to take your steak out and give it a good jab every so often. Read more: Avoid Dry Beef Syndrome: Here Are the Best Ways to Reheat Steak
Buzz Feed
a day ago
- Buzz Feed
Parents Reveal Most Expensive Kid Accidents Ever
Raising children, as I understand, is beautiful. It's also extremely messy. And extremely expensive. Knowing this first-hand, a parent on the popular fatherhood subreddit r/Daddit asked the forum to share their stories in response to the question: "What's the most money your kid has ever cost you in one go? Can anyone beat $7,800?" Of course, that dollar amount had us all on the edge of our seats, so poster Good_Policy3529 started the conversation: "A while back, I found out that my young son had discovered the cap on our sewer cleanout wasn't correctly in place. He developed a hobby of dropping rocks down it for fun..." "...We had to get an excavator out and dig up the whole line. It was packed with hundreds of rocks. All shapes and sizes. Total bill around $7,800. I'd love some similar stories for commiseration..." "...P.S. And yes, I have replaced the cap and am keeping an eye on it. Neither my house nor my kid came with an owner's manual, and nobody told me that one of the rules of parenting was 'make sure your kid isn't blocking your main sewer line with rocks to amuse themselves.'" Here are some of the stories other dads shared about the single biggest costs they've incurred because of their kids (or that they caused their parents when they were kids): "A friend's daughter was using her allowance to buy bags of candy. She then used the candy to bribe her 2-year-old brother to be quiet at night. $5,000 dental bill in a 2-year-old." "Mine broke several trilobite fossils. They didn't cost me much in dollars. But trilobites died out 250 million years ago, so, counted in time, I was pretty pissed." —miguel-elote "Told my 4-year-old to go potty before we all walked to the playground. He apparently couldn't reach to turn off the water after washing his hands and didn't bother to tell us. We came home after about 45 minutes to water pouring through the ceiling into the main floor. Had to get all new floors and a new master bath. $120,000 in damages, 10-month-long fight with insurance, and had to stay in an Airbnb for 2 months. House looks great now, but def wouldn't recommend." "I was doing yard work, and my 15-year-old was target shooting with a spring-loaded BB gun. Randomly heard a crash and got a $700 bill for the neighbor's rear sliding glass door." "You know those ultrasonic sensors on the back of a car bumper? He thought they were buttons, so he pushed them…harder and harder until they fell into the bumpers. Ended up being something like $700 to fix them all." —nafuot "Well, my middle child totalled my van. According to my insurance, it was worth $15,000." "My daughter stuck a Lego 1x1 up her nose, and it got stuck. My wife took her to urgent care, who said it was way out of their league, and she got sent to the ER. Three nurses and my wife had to hold down my daughter, and two different doctors attempted to get it out until a third one got it out on the first try. A $500 ER deductible later, and my wife didn't even keep the damn brick so I could at least put it on my Lego shelf as the most expensive Lego purchase I've ever made." —clunkclunk "$12,000. Youngest woke up in the middle of the night and ran the upstairs sink with the drain closed. It ran like that for hours until the kitchen and dining room ceilings collapsed." —schrombomb_ "My kid was flushing wet wipes down the toilet. We specifically told him not to do it, but he did it anyway. Eventually, it clogged the main line, and sewage backed up in our finished basement. Had to tear up all the bamboo flooring plus two feet of drywall. Cost us around $15,000, though homeowners' insurance paid for some of it. We don't keep wet wipes in the house anymore." "I was the kid in this case. Got a Wolverine 'adamantium' mold thing as a gift. Tried to make the mold, it sucked, poured it down the bathroom sink. The 'adamantium' basically hardened into concrete in the pipes, cost my parents close to $5,000." —CaptainObvious1906 "Last year's summer vacation — our 3-year-old got five minutes without surveillance when we were putting our baggage in the house, and there was a small playground at the front yard where he started playing right away after hours of sitting in the car. Sadly, there were some colorful stones lying around, and he took them to do a superquick drawing session on several parking cars. 15,000€ damage on the paint of five cars in fucking 5 minutes. Our own car not counted, which also got a new design." "$3,500. Turned off our chest freezer that we had just loaded with a 1/2 cow and a pig, plus some other stuff. We didn't notice until 5 days later." —thecasey1981 "Didn't cost me much money, but a similar story. My son had a delicious cut of beef brisket that he didn't want to finish, and apparently didn't want me to know he didn't finish. So he flushed it. Just big enough to hide in the curves of the toilet. As I try plunging it, it just pushes the clog down further." "It's not as expensive, but one of my kids at some point put a quarter into the CD slot in my minivan radio, which eventually bumped and jostled its way around and through the system until it nestled so perfectly between a couple of wires that it caused the whole vehicle's interior electrical system to short circuit, killing my turn signals, and lighting up every warning on my dashboard. $300 to find and remove a 25-cent quarter, so I guess it cost me $299.75." —cranberries_hate_you "My brother drove my mother's car through the back of the garage at age 4. Took out the car, the garage, the bikes, and the BBQ. It was 1986, but still probably more than $7,000." "I had a soap dish on my bathroom wall. My daughter planted a foot on either side and pulled as hard as she could, and yanked the whole thing out of the wall, and caused a bunch of the tiles on the wall to start popping off, smashing into and chipping the tub. Ended up doing a whole bathroom remodel for $15,000." "Bathroom was in dire need of it (was the same everything from the 1950s, immaculately preserved by the previous owners, but still very, very old), but it sucked to have our timetable for a remodel moved up by several years."—trevdak2 "I was at work about 40 mins away and my other half was struggling to keep an eye on both our boy and dogs, just one of those days... The boy threw small boxes of raisins on the floor, and one of the dogs snuck off with two boxes and ate them. Fortunately, my partner noticed quickly and rushed the pup to the vets. Lots of vomiting and a blood test later, we're slapped with a £450 ($600) bill." "Not me, but my sister ran up a $4,000 phone bill between 10-cent texts and daytime minutes used, and of course, an extensive library of ringtones. Thankfully, the phone company didn't make him pay it all, but I will always remember the day that bill came." —crazyleasha37 "My stepbrother had his dad's credit card number logged on his Xbox. He bought V-Bucks in Fortnite, skins in COD, etc. I never found out the total, but allegedly it was enough to buy a car, so I'm guessing in the low $20,000s. He now has to pay off every penny back by giving half of his paycheck to his dad. This happened when he was 17, and he's still paying it off three years later." "My son is prone to extreme mood swings/angry outbursts. He manages this much better now, but things we've had to replace following his rage include: Living room TV (threw something at it, cracking it) $5,002; cabinet doors (kicked and cracked), $600; 4-5 panes of glass, $60 in materials (I got good at DIY'ing these replacements); door and trim damage from slamming, DIY'd for $50 in materials; wall damage from kicking, DIY'd for $50 in materials." And finally, "Accidental issues. Broken dishwasher. Son was goofing around in the kitchen while the door was all the way down. Fell on it and completely bent/twisted it. It was about $1,200 for a new dishwasher." —robowarrior023 And there you have it, folks. If you have kids or know any accident-prone ones (or were one yourself), we want to hear about the single biggest expense they've caused the adults in their life. Share with us in the comments or via this anonymous form. Your responses may be featured in an upcoming BuzzFeed Community article. Note: Submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Yahoo
Dear Abby: My co-workers hate me and I don't know why
DEAR ABBY: I have been a registered nurse for 11 years. I am experienced in hospital floor nursing and clinic nursing, and I have always been well regarded in my field. I have never had a problem forming positive relationships with my co-workers. I recently moved to a new unit. Although the workflow is slightly different than what I was used to, I have caught on quickly and feel confident in my ability to do the job well. My problem is, none of the nurses seems to like or respect me. They take every opportunity to point out insignificant differences in the way I do things as opposed to how they do them. What it really comes down to is their preference vs. actual protocol. I try daily to engage in conversation, get to know them better and form a supportive and respectful working relationship with each of them. My efforts are met with little or no reciprocation. I love the type of work I'm doing. The hours are great, and I have the time to provide great nursing care and serve as an advocate for my patients. However, I have always said I could have the worst job in the world but if I had great relationships with my co-workers, it would make the job much more enjoyable. I now feel I have the best job with the worst co-workers. I have gone home and cried multiple times from feeling frustrated that I'm not accepted. Should I quit and move on? If not, how can I make this better? –– DISAPPOINTED IN ARKANSAS DEAR DISAPPOINTED: Change can be difficult for everyone involved, including your co-workers. Because you are new, give it a little more time before deciding whether to move on. If things don't improve, discuss your feelings of isolation with your supervisor to ensure that the frosty reception you have received doesn't negatively affect your performance. Then look for another job. DEAR ABBY: I am one of three adult siblings. My brother and sister both have children; I do not. I love my nieces and nephews and have always provided birthday and Christmas gifts, as well as sent them money for graduations or other special events. My siblings say they no longer want to exchange gifts between the three of us, and just to focus on the kids. I spend several hundred dollars a year on gifts for them and receive no gifts in return. I know that when a gift is given, there should be no expectation of getting one in return, but I think a token gift for my birthday and Christmas wouldn't be unreasonable. I would be thrilled to receive a $20 gift card to a restaurant. Am I being unreasonable? — LOVING UNCLE IN THE MIDWEST DEAR UNCLE: Perhaps. From what you have written, I don't think you would get anything without 'prompting.' Instead of dwelling on what you don't receive, try to concentrate on the attention and affection they do give you, and you may feel less deprived. Dear Abby is written by Abigail Van Buren, also known as Jeanne Phillips, and was founded by her mother, Pauline Phillips. Contact Dear Abby at or P.O. Box 69440, Los Angeles, CA 90069. Solve the daily Crossword
