Miniatures

Rocket, Battery Park.


Satellite, same.


House, World Financial Center.


Houses at the base of an apartment building, Tribeca.


Duckling, Battery Park City waterfront.


Poodles, Park Slope.

Tarte au flan

This crust plus this filling plus improvising (some relating to conversions and others due to my own sense of what texture flan custard must have before getting poured into the crust) resulted in something I think kind of looks like flan. Other issues that arose: the tart tin I own is not the appropriate 'host' for a flan (way too shallow, a possible problem given that the thing nearly exploded all over the oven like a wild souffle); I didn't let the dough chill for a whole hour; I didn't pre-bake the crust for terribly long; and so on, and so on. The crust is usually my least favorite part of flan, but you do sort of want there to be enough of it that the custard doesn't coat the bottom of the oven. Yet all so far went according to plan. If it tastes as flan-like as it looks, there goes my principal non-research reason for needing to be in Paris this summer.

An investment piece

On Friday, one thing led to another and I ended up scoring a pair of APC jeans (see attempt at photograph above) for $5, or $150 less than what seems to be the cheapest pair at the store. Used, obviously, thanks to Housing Works Tribeca's jeans extravaganza. The imperceptible weight fluctuations of (to paraphrase Gossip Girl) Manhattan's elite mean new upmarket jeans for all.

The garment's two main flaws - too small, at least post-latkes, and the sailor-pants-esque flare - could be overlooked both because the flaws have upsides (a reminder that latke consumption should be finite, and that skinny jeans really aren't the most flattering, respectively), and because, well, $5. That, and the fashionable men of the French department rave about this brand, and since they tend not to look quite a schleppy as I do on a typical day, I should probably heed their advice. (It would mean a trip to Williamsburg, but yes, but I am intrigued.) The material of these particular jeans reminded me why denim ever caused such a fuss in the first place - they're dark blue, no streaks of any kind, and this thick material that makes other jeans seem like leggings.

I have a whole nautical outfit in mind, one that will involve these plus a striped white-and-navy H&M shirt, perhaps, post-snowstorm, paired with these:



But beyond the one outfit, I'm not sure quite what to do with these pants. Any ideas?