“Cats have it all: admiration, an endless sleep, and company only when they want it.”

 

Nigella’s Mother-in-Law’s Madeira Cake

 

(slightly adapted from Nigella Lawson’s How To Be A Domestic Goddess)

• 240 grams softened unsalted butter
• 200 grams caster sugar, plus 2 tablespoons for sprinkling
• Grated zest and juice of one lemon
• 3 large eggs
• 300 grams all purpose flour
• 2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

– Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, and then mix in the lemon zest.

– Add the eggs to the butter/sugar mixture, one at a time, with a tablespoon of flour for each.

– Gently mix in the rest of the flour, to which you have whisked in the baking powder.  Add the lemon juice and mix until just combined.

– Scrape the batter into a buttered and parchment-lined loaf pan and sprinkle the 2 tablespoons sugar on top.  Bake in a pre-heated 170C oven for 55 minutes – 1 hour or until a skewer comes out clean.

– Remove from the oven to a wire rack and cool in the pan for 10 minutes.  Remove from the pan and cool completely on the wire rack.

 80breakfasts.com

Wise Words

Beautiful 50's Evening Gowns

Elsa Schiaparelli. 1939

Animal print

Animal print became popular for women in the United States in the late 1960s during the Bohemian movement. Christian Dior is credited as the first designer to put leopard print  rather than fur on the runway in 1947. “If a woman was wearing leopard, it means that she has a savage or wild sexuality. It became one of the most used prints in haute couture, and from haute couture it became democratized to streetwear, and it went back to the African continent free of its initial symbolism.” Leopard print does not involve the slaughter of rare animals and is valued for its eye-catching quality. When used in female clothing it can signify independence, confidence, sexuality and nonconformity, depending on the nature of the clothing or accessory.

PSYCHIATRIC HOSPITAL The bathtub test

 

PSYCHIATRIC HOSPITAL

The bathtub test

During a visit to a mental hospital, one of the visitors asked the director:

- What is the criteria for which they decide who needs to be hospitalized here?

The director replied:

- We fill a bathtub with water and offer the patient a spoon, a glass and a bucket and ask that it empty. According to how he decides to empty it, we decide whether or not to commit it.

Awwwwwwwwww I get it.

- A normal person would use the bucket, which is bigger than the glass and the spoon, the visitor said.

No! No! - replied the director.

- A normal person would remove tampon from sewer.

Which do you prefer?

Private room or shared?

Sometimes life has more options than those offered, just look at them.

Now tell the truth...

You also picked the bucket right?

I already knew it... we are all crazy.

Worth reading.

To know how many crazy people are out here...

Karen Ann Graham - Estee Lauder's exclusive spokesmodel.

           

Karen Ann Graham (born 1945) is an American model from the 1970s and the 1980s. She was a spokesmodel for the cosmetics company Estee Lauder, Inc.

          

Her status as a legendary model was set, however, with the Estee Lauder advertising campaign. The company began employing her intermittently in 1970 and 1971 to appear in their print ads. She was employed so frequently that by 1973, she became Estee Lauder's exclusive spokesmodel. 

It was a job she would do for the rest of the decade, appearing in print and television ads that presented her in tasteful, elegant, generously appointed tableaux - a parlor, a drawing room, a veranda - to represent the high-class image the Estee Lauder company created for itself.

In these ads, Graham was never identified by name, which Estee Lauder herself frankly admitted was deliberate. Because the Lauder company aimed its products at upper-income women, at expensive prices, the ads had to project luxury. Various props were used - dolls, horses, and, curiously, a framed photograph of Nicholas II, the last czar of Russia, in a 1981 ad. The ad campaigns were mainly meant to project traditional, Old World elegance.

Karen Graham inevitably gained attention from many men, including Delbert Coleman, a tycoon who ran the Stardust Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada, and was known for his controversial financial deals. He married Graham in 1974, but the marriage did not last long. "I didn't so much marry him as he married me," she admitted in a 1999 interview. "You know, sometimes people think that models are the image in the magazines. Certainly [Delbert Coleman] married me thinking I was the woman in the Estee Lauder ads."

Karen Graham quit in 1985, when she turned 40; as she told People magazine in 2000, she decided to leave modeling while she was still on top. "I didn't want to see myself going downhill in the profession," she explained.

In 1999, she returned to modeling for Estee Lauder's "Resilience Lift" face cream, aimed at older women and designed to help female skin reproduce the skin nutrients that prevent wrinkles. Graham was happy to return to modeling for the campaign, which lasted for a few years. 

She strongly believes that women should remain active well into middle age. "A lot of women my age," she said at age 53, "underestimate themselves, and I think it's important to get the message out there that we're vital, we're active, we're important, and we're beautiful."