Wednesday, in which Wendy ponders spring, The frick'in Fricke, and well the highest of fashion

I am only going to whisper this, as I do not want to jinx things...

It hit +6C today!
Things were melting, including my cold heart.

Oh sure, rumour has it that we are going to get 6 inches of snow on the weekend, but that's the weekend, and this is well, almost spring...

The snow has made me very Jack Nicholson in The Shining.
For instance, right before my trip, the snow was at the bottom of those
four slashes of black on the lower part of the picture.
This is big news in these parts folks.
Cling to your families as surely this is very Walking Dead...

Well whatever.  We all have our "things".

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It seems there was a time when rich people built houses that were so excessive that they boggle the imagination.  No this is no Kanye and Kim K. tell all, this is The Fricke Museum.  We had never been and were not to be daunted by a mere blizzard.

For those unaware:

The Frick Collection is an art museum located in the Henry Clay Frick House on the Upper East Side in Manhattan, New York City at 1 East 70th Street, at the northeast corner with Fifth Avenue. It houses the collection of industrialist Henry Clay Frick (1849–1919).

Mr. Fricke liked a fancy house.  And he liked to fill that fancy house with pretty things, so you get to get up nice and close to the Vermeers and Rembrandts he probably drank his coffee in front of each day.

and they decorated over the top!

I loved this museum, and we spent quite a bit of time there, before braving the blizzard for the ten block walk up to the Met. 

My favourite was this little room:

Sorry this is out of focus - my fingers were frozen!

 

Three cheers for Mr. Fricke and his avarice!

Tonight I made a lovely tomato tart from my A Kitchen in France cookbook by Mimi Thorisson.

Really, this should not be attempted except in perfect tomato weather, but I had spring fever and what the hell, I went for it!

This a good recipe!

If you go to her blog, you can find a pretty close approximation to the recipe here.  I think the one in the cookbook, with its basil pesto layer at the bottom is better.  and I made my own Pâte brisée , following her recipe, which was excellent.

I don't know about you, but I am still giddy over the surprise guests at the Valentino show in Paris:





 I adored Zoolander and have so many favourite quotes:

Derek Zoolander: I'm pretty sure there's a lot more to life than being really, really, ridiculously good looking. And I plan on finding out what that is.

Derek Zoolander: So join now, 'cause at the Derek Zoolander Center For Kids Who Can't Read Good And Wanna Learn To Do Other Stuff Good Too, we teach you that there's more to life than just being really, really, really good looking. Right kids?

The only thing that would have made it even better for me was if Bowie had suddenly popped out of the crowd...

If nobody has any objections, I believe I might be of service.

I'm setting my watch set for the countdown right now....

So that was my day.  How about you?

xoxo wendy