canny granny

Beauty is in the Photoshop

While we are talking of beauty, here’s how an ordinary woman is transformed with good cosmetics and even better photoshopping into a billboard beauty

Evolution

I tried to embed the video in here but the page went skewiff, sagged sideways, and lost all shape (a little like myself). You will have to use the link to see the video on youtube and if there’s anyone who can tell me how to embed a video I will be forever grateful

Chicken Soup part two

continued from Chicken Soup part one
The chicken carcasses simmered overnight and most of today in my slow cooker. After pouring everything into a large bowl, I cooled it down on the kitchen bench and then popped the bowl into the frig for an hour. Long enough for the fat to form a crust on the top, which makes it easier to skim off.

I then transferred the liquid into plastic containers, one for the freezer and one for tonight’s chicken soup. (I always grab a cup to pour over my cat’s dried pellets before I start to season the stock.)

Soup

• one container of stock
• 2-3 cups of water
• 2 onions, peeled and chopped
• 3-5 garlic cloves
• 2 carrots, chopped
• small pkt of instant noodles (throw away the little flavour sachet)
• the cooked chicken meat from the stock-making process
• Salt and pepper
• parsley, finely chopped

• Put the vegetables into a soup pot, pour 2 cups of water over them and bring to a boil. Simmer for 5 minutes.
• Pour in the chicken stock and the bits of cooked chicken, add the noodles.
• Season with salt and pepper. Let it simmer another 10 minutes, adding more water if necessary.
• Sprinkle with chopped parsley before serving

Total cost to me $4.20

Beauty is not in the Eye

Have a look at the painting Venus at the Mirror by Rubens. Called Beauty is in the Eye, it’s in the post immediately before this one. Does the woman posing as Venus, Goddess of Beauty, seem attractive to you? Then look at the photo in this post.

Is this model on your left your idea of beauty? Are you in line with modern trends where emaciation is seen as beautiful?

Feast your eyes on one of today’s beauties, a model, a paragon of pulchritude, an inspiration for all young girls everywhere to emulate.

I believe the look is called ‘heroin chic’ although the reason why heroin, a dangerous and illegal drug, would be considered chic escapes me.

I must be old fashioned. The photo nauseates me. If this young woman were my daughter I would have her in hospital instantly. I’ve seen healthier looking and more attractive people in the terminal care ward.

Beauty is in the Eye

Painting : Venus at the Mirror: Rubens. 1615

Is Venus beautiful? Is the woman modeling for the artist beautiful? Back in 1615 she was.

The model is Hélène, wife of the artist.

Peter Paul Rubens was a prolific seventeenth-century Flemish and European painter, a proponent of an exuberant Baroque style that emphasised movement, colour, and sensuality. Rubens is known for his Counter-Reformation altarpieces, portraits, landscapes, and history paintings of mythological and allegorical subjects. And for paintings of his young wife.

In 1630, four years after the death of his first wife, the 53-year-old painter married 16-year-old Hélène Fourment, an acknowledged beauty. She inspired the voluptuous figures in so many of his paintings from then on.