animal house

bonjourno! it's been hard to do outfit posts lately, as most of my clothing has been in a big scary pile on my bedroom floor (yep, despite the fact that i am an adult, married woman, i have my own separate bedroom which is basically a giant closet/clothes hamper.) work is busy, and i think i've been out of town for something like the last five weekends - the beach, quebec city, connecticut, etc - and we're heading to chicago this week, for a much needed vacation - and it just hasn't left a lot of time for cleaning. at least, not when i have six whole seasons of dawson's creek to watch.

but i'm trying to get on my grind a bit, and that means straightening my pigsty. in doing so i've started to notice a theme in recent, and not-so-recent, clothing acquisitions - animals, everywhere.





top: thrifted
necklace: marion vidal
pants: imogene & willy
shoes: comptoir des cotonniers

i've been wearing this necklace basically non-stop, but that's only the beginning. . .

from a swan-printed kimono,

to kitty cat flats,

lady bug wide leg pants,

my small charlotte taylor ant collection,

horse-printed jeans,

this skirt, and a gaggle of creatures in brooch form, probably the creepiest of which is this kitten.


i'm also noticing that for a dog person, i have an awful lot of cat clothing.

i'm super excited to go to chicago, it's been YEARS - i met sam just days before my last visit, when i was planning to move back shortly - i found an apartment and a job, and told all my friends i'd see them in a few short weeks - then realized i couldn't leave the guy behind and threw caution to the wind to stay in new york. of course, being me, i'm most excited to eat everything while i'm there - chicagoans, what's new in the city, and where must i eat?!

much love to each and every one of you,

xo audrey

to be adored

happy friday! i had a very busy week - right smack in the middle, i was fortunate to get to sneak a peak at warby parker's upcoming line. i first started wearing glasses in high school, but my prescription was so weak that i never really wore them; finally, just recently, i came to terms with the fact that not being able to identify friends and regulars that come into the bakery and say hello, a mere 10 or so feet away, is totally unacceptable. i've been wearing contact lenses, but i'm excited to get a new pair of frames when the new ones come out! anyhoo, i have a new favorite blouse, and wore that to wednesday's jaunt:

 

top: tba
pants: zara (similar here)
necklace: vintage, thrifted
shoes: vintage, ebay

my hair is in the awkward phase of growing out where the only time it looks semi-okay is when i either sloppily throw it out or muss it so far out from my head that you can't tell how awful the haircut (or lack thereof) is. the last time stylist scissors touched it was back in august. i chopped my own bangs a couple months ago.

anyway, i've got a busy weekend ahead and more outfits and recipes to post, so more from me soon!

xo audrey

breakfast for dinner

hello! last night i scurried all the way to the upper east side, to an event thrown by decades to benefit sloan-kettering hospital's cancer center. basically, i got to sip champagne and feast my eyes on some of the most beautiful designer vintage clothing i've ever seen in person - none of which i could afford, of course. still, it was fun, and i got to catch up with a long-lost friend, which is always a good thing.
 

top: thrifted vintage
scarf: thrifted
boots & skirt: madewell
earrings: c/o charming charlie

 i got home and set straight to work on dinner - i'd scored some duck eggs and house-made corned beef hash from work, so i had a vague plan for breakfast for dinner. i heated up the oven, got some pizza dough rising, and set about chopping.

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breakfast pizza 

one batch pizza dough - i use this recipe
white or red sauce - i made a bechamel sauce (basic recipe here) with onions, mushrooms, ramps and fresh ricotta
toppings of your choice - i used baby heirloom tomatoes, duck prosciutto, avocado and an egg

heat your oven as high as it will go without broiling - mine was up to about 550. put your pizza stone or a sheet pan inside to heat up with the oven. make your sauce, then roll out your pizza dough on a piece of parchment so you can easily slide it onto your sheet pan/pizza stone. bake it for 2-3 minutes, then pull it out and spread your sauce over the dough, and add the toppings that need more time - for me, it was the tomatoes and prosciutto. bake these for 5-6 minutes, then pull out and add the egg and avocado; bake for five more minutes or so, until the white of the egg is fully cooked.
 

while everything was baking, i quickly threw together some corned beef hash.

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corned beef hash

 3 large idaho potatoes, scrubbed and diced
1 small yellow onion, diced
a spring of rosemary, finely chopped
1 cup of prepared corned beef hash (mine was dressed with some mustard and mustard seeds, salt, and pepper)
butter
3 eggs (i used duck eggs, just because.)

once everything is chopped, it's quite simple; use a cast-iron pan and add a couple tablespoons of butter. add the onion, and sautee until soft and transparent; add the potatoes, turn the heat down to medium-low, and just let those potatoes cook through. don't worry too much about them sticking to the pan; add a bit of butter if this happens (my favorite solution to any problem) and you'll just have some nice crispy bits. add the rosemary, and salt and pepper to taste, and the corned beef (chopped into bite sized pieces) once the potatoes have cooked through, and stir occasionally; i put mine in the super hot oven with the pizza, still baking, so they'd be ready at the same time. while the hash crisped up in the oven, i fried the duck eggs to place on top.
 

i didn't get home to start cooking until nearly ten o'clock, so by the time we sat down to dinner it was a rather unhealthy 11:20; it felt sort of right, though, eating breakfast in the pitch black, all sleepy-like. but instead of just waking up, i got to go to bed right after. bonus. have a wonderful week, and more from me soon -

xo audrey

winner, winner, potato and kale dinner

hello! i know i promised a winner on friday, but i was seriously in the throws of the worst cold/flu monster i've ever had - three and a half days, no work, completely bedridden. did you know you can be in bed so long that your body is actually sore from being in bed too long? fact. finally, saturday night, i dragged myself out of bed (just in time to catch andrew bird at the bell house) and had a semi-normal sunday, if it is semi-normal to fall asleep at 8:45 pm. so i'm not 100% yet. but i'm getting there.


top: j crew
dress: thrifted
tights: urban outfitters (fleece lined! so warm!)
shoes: thrifted
brooch: thrifted
hair: lack of cut, dye or attention in 6 months and counting

so, anyways, i promised on friday that i'd have a winner and i am a solid three days late, so without further ado: dawn of turby and john! shoot me an email (homerunballerina@gmail.com) and we'll work out the details. congratulations, wear it in happiness and health! and thank you to all of you who entered - more giveaways soon.

it's been awhile since i posted any food - which feels so wrong! - so i have a quick, easy, and even pretty healthy dinner for you guys. for what it's worth, i've become a complete instagram addict - you can follow me @oddreigh - and post my daily goings-on at the bakery a few times a day there. so it's really not that i stopped posting about food - just that i switched to a quicker, more immediate medium.

i was in ann arbor last weekend, visiting family and getting to spend some all-too-rare time with my little sister and mom, and spent a lot of time at my aunt susie's place. aunt susie and i have a lot in common - both "creative" types, i guess, who love to draw, bake and create - and she had a library of cookbooks that made me swoon. i got to flip through quite a few of them (sneaking iphone photos of the ones i want to buy for myself) but one recipe caught my eye, and was so simple i was able to sort-of-memorize it, enough to make it for dinner tonight.

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potato and kale galette (adapted from an old gourmet cookbook)

1 bunch of kale, leaves pulled of the stem, torn up and washed
3 cloves of garlic, minced
1 T olive oil
3 T butter
2 large baking potatoes, cleaned, peeled and sliced very thin (i used a mandolin)

start off by getting your oil going in a pan, over medium heat; once hot, add the garlic and cook just until it starts to brown; add the kale, still wet from being rinsed, and cook it until it's very wilted, and much brighter green. turn off the heat, and set it aside.

now get a cast iron pan going. i used a 10 inch pan. melt about a tablespoon of butter in the pan, then mosaic about 1/3 of the potato slices over it, working quickly; add 1/2 of the kale, then another 1/3 of the potato slices mosaiced (salt and pepper this, and brush a bit of melted butter atop them,) then the other half of the kale and the last of the potatoes. basically, you've made a double-decker potato and kale pancake. brush the top layer of potatoes generously with butter, then butter a piece of aluminum foil and use a heavy pan to weigh down the stack. let them cook for ten minutes or so, over medium to medium low heat; once the bottom layer of potatoes starts to brown (you'll be able to see the edges start to brown and curl a bit,) grab a sheet pan and some oven mitts. this is the trickiest part. use a metal spatula to carefully slide the pancake out of the pan and onto the sheet pan, then invert the pan over it and flip it back onto the heat, so the browned side is facing up and the previously uncooked side is now being cooked. cook this for another ten minutes or so, and that's it! slide it off and serve. i was trying to keep it healthy and simple, so i ate it plain (i'm a fan of simple flavors, anyway) with lots of sea salt and pepper; it would be great with goat cheese, though, and sam doused his in ketchup, so there's that.







thanks a bunch for reading, and have a fabulous week!

xo audrey

glowering flower

good morning! how was everyone's weekend? i'd planned on going into the city to see a couple of shows - fashion! - but instead i stayed home and cleaned my room, because THAT'S how cool i am. this is kind of a repeat, i guess, of what happened in september - delighted to be invited to shows, for the first time ever, i rsvp'd to almost all of them and then ended up only going to the one - rachel comey - that i was most excited to see. there are a few reasons for this - i'm incredibly flattered to be invited, to be sure, but i don't really think of myself as a "fashion person." i am really just a girl who likes dressing up. and this weekend, the craziness of lincoln center - the jumble of photographers, the legions of stick-thin models, the waves and waves of beautiful, confident women walking swiftly past me in several-thousand-dollar shoes as i wait in line, staring at my $12-on-ebay-miu miu's - just didn't sound like a good time. i'm definitely not judging - lots of close blogger friends attended many a show over the past week, and have some really gorgeous photos to show for it. but they know what they're talking about; i don't.

all that to say, i am going to a presentation tonight and i am VERY excited about it. my camera is fully charged and i'm dressed in an outfit that is the most show-appropriate i could put together; i'll post photos from both the show and of my outfit tomorrow, so you can (hopefully) see what i mean. in the meantime, here's an outfit from last week that i somehow never got around to posting.





top: quail
skirt: thrifted, vintage
shoes: a few seasons old pour la victoire
brooch: thrifted vintage clip-on earring

this shirt is one of my all-time favorites, but i don't wear it much anymore because i accidentally ran it through the wash about a year and a half ago, and it's shrunk up to be less of a crop top. . . well, yeah, less than a crop top. i saw a girl rocking this color combo on the F train a couple weeks ago and made mental note of it, and this green skirt is just high enough to make this not-totally-unreasonable for work. all together, the colors & shapes felt very floral to me; a nice little last-hurrah for summer.

oh! i've recently gotten a lot of questions about how i learned to cook. i did go to french culinary school, and graduated about 2 years ago; my concentration was pastry, though, so all of my classes focused on pies, tarts, brulees, napoleons, macarons, chocolate, etc. as far as cooking - rather than baking - is concerned, i really got into cooking a few years ago, when i moved to chicago; i love good food but couldn't afford to go out to eat, so i started slowly, cooking recipes from the cookbooks my mom had given me, and just kept on going from there. i was lucky enough to grow up with a mother and two sisters who knew their way around the kitchen, so i learned some simply by observing them. within a few years i'd cooked enough to know how to make the basics, and started experimenting more; in the year before i left chicago, i started an underground restaurant of sorts, selling tickets to a four- or five-course meal to be cooked in my apartment. it was not only a success, but the most fun i'd ever had - that's when i decided to move to new york to attend culinary school. i decided to focus on baking instead of cooking for a couple of reasons - one being that cooking is something much more easily experimented with. once you know the basics, you can pretty much throw whatever you like into a dish and it will work, so long as you've thought the flavors through - baking, though, is an exact science, and i wanted to be able to play with recipes the way i can when i cook.

i hope this answers some questions, and wasn't too long winded! thank you all so much for reading - you make this a lot of fun for me.

i hope you all had a lovely weekend! until tomorrow,

xo audrey

new wave

good morning! i've been rather awful about taking outfit photos lately - in truth, my bedroom/closet is a complete disaster zone. it is in crisis. we've been going out of town every weekend for the past four weeks and i just haven't had a night to stay in and get it done - or rather, i've had a couple of nights where i COULD have, but instead i hang up a couple of dresses and then get side tracked arranging brooches on a shelf or making soup. so, i'm sorry about that. i'm actually having a lot of fun getting dressed lately; i think i said it before, but i kind of feel like i'm in costume with this hair cut and color, and i've been heavily leaning towards what i think of as 60's mod/french new wave type styles. here's one i've been liking.




top: a gift from the sweet & beautiful krystle of dear winsome
necklace: thrifted
pants: zara
shoes: beau coops x karen walker
belt: asos

last night was the big party for arrojo's tenth anniversary; i actually ended up loaning the salon my camera so they could shoot the event, so i don't have any photos myself, but i did get the final "after" shot from the photographer:



i'm giving pretty serious bitchface (this was after i think twenty minutes or so of having my photo snapped, and i think i was starting to lose it) but you can see the cut & color well, and it IS flattering, even if i look mean.

what's everyone up to for fashion's night out? i think i'm going to hit up the lauren moffatt party, say hello to erin, and then stop over to see keiko at the event she's hosting.

xo audrey

avocado squash

yep, on days when i can't think of a blog title, i default to "what did i eat last night?" one track mind, ladies and gentlemen. one track mind.

yesterday was. . . monday. [disclaimer: after missing two days last week i am now posting everything a day behind. and rather than pretend i wrote this at 8 am, i'm just going to tell you i wrote it yesterday [tuesday] when the day before was, in fact, monday. sorry for the confusion.] i just tried for over a minute to think of any adjective to put at the end of that sentence and i failed. it was a day. i worked, went home, cleaned my room, made sam & i dinner and went to bed while watching curb your enthusiasm. really, nothing to write home about. or to blog about, in fact!




where it was once a novelty to see my closet, now you just get to watch as it gets messier and messier. sigh.

this dress is another in the haul of dresses i got from my new favorite thrift store in new jersey a few weeks ago. honestly, it's not a favorite - i feel like it is way too, "HEY CHECK IT OUT: BOOBS!" which i try to avoid whenever possible, but sam loves it (go figure) and i do love the pattern and colors, so i gave it a run yesterday. we'll see if it makes the cut when i start sellin' stuff on etsy.

dress: vintage, thrifted
belt: thrifted
shoes: c/o seychelles (similar here)

i can't say enough about how much i love these shoes. they were, in fact, my wedding shoes and they are so comfortable i kept them on all night, and walked all over manhattan in them yesterday.

i've been attempting to eat a bit healthier lately, which i basically hate. i love butter, bacon, beer and pretty much all things bad for you, but (sigh) i'm not as young as i used to be, and blah blah hips-getting-bigger-whine. so i tried a mostly-veggie dinner last night and it was actually pretty delicious, and quite lovely.









this never would have happened if i hadn't spent an hour fawning over veggies at the farmer's market on sunday. such a simple tomato salad is really only pretty and delicious if they tomatoes are fresh and grown in smaller batches, and it takes cute little baby eggplant and squash named avocados to get me to eat that stuff.

basically i made 3 really quick and easy side dishes: baby eggplant and avocado squash, the former halved and the latter diced then sauteed until soft and browned in olive oil & garlic and sprinkled with salt and pepper; baby heirloom tomato salad, simply sliced up, drizzled with olive oil & liberally salted; and zucchini, fresh from sam's family friend's garden, sliced with a peeler and quick sauteed in the remaining olive oil from the squash, then sprinkled with salt, pepper, and a cheese of your choice - i used cojita, but ricotta salata, feta or any parmesan would have been great, too.

of course i served all of this with a "side" of duck confit. . . one healthy step at a time, amirite?

until next time,

xo audrey

colonel mustard

good morning! a bit of catching up to do after one day of dead camera & one day of camera forgotten. this is what i wore wednesday, for a day of work before meeting up with keiko and some new friends for dinner in dumbo, a dinner that heavily featured pork belly and beets, two of my favorites.






my mess of a closet. i've been compulsively buying stuff on thrifting missions for months now without updating my store and the situation is out.of.control. i finally broke down and ordered a dressmaker's mannequin yesterday so i can easily take pictures of & post a lot of stuff quickly; expect major shop updates in the coming weeks. some really amazing stuff, too! my hips are not what they used to be, and it's time to let go of some old favorites.

dress: asos
slip: thrifted
heart: bando shoe clip
shoes: ebay

this dress is really similar in shape and color to one i pretty much wore into the ground over the last couple of years. it started to shred around the bottom, so i chopped it off and made it into a blouse; i finally just replaced the buttons a couple days ago so i can get it back into rotation.

what are your plans for the weekend? i'm meeting a few girlfriends for drinks this evening, which i'm looking forward to; the rest of the weekend will be spent, i think, hunkered down on some invitations i'm working on.

more soon to come,

xo audrey

medium rare

hello hello! i write you from a pool of sweat somewhere in soho. my god, it is hot. our office has no a/c, nor does our apartment, so i am deciding to think of my current state as "permanently glowing," rather than "constantly sweaty." and sam just brought me flowers at work! so now i am flushed with love. ah, wedded bliss. give it a try some time.

anyway! it is hot as hell, so today i elected a dress with a semi-open back that i picked up at a thrift store a few weeks ago. it's a bit big but i used a belting trick that a reader (thank you gabrielle!) gave me to nip in at the waist. naturally, the belt isn't helping with the whole sweatiness situation, but i digress. in fact, shoutout to 29 skirts! this is my first (actually accidental) thrifted thursday - everything in this outfit was thrifted, except i guess the shoes, which i scored on ebay for a song, so that kind of counts, right?





dress, belt & necklace: thrifted
shoes: scored on ebay

and this outfit happens to match what i made for dinner a couple nights ago, so why not throw that on here?




this was sooo quick, sooo easy and sooo delicious. and probably even soooort of healthy! ish!


baby romaine lettuce (i just used the pre-washed stuff they sell in plastic containers at the grocery store)
1/2 lb flank steak
about 1/4 cup of blue cheese (or feta, or goat, or none at all! if blue is too much for you)
1/2 red onion, verrrrry thinly sliced
a drizzle of really good aged balsamic vinegar

so! turn a pan onto medium-high heat. pat the flank steak dry, then sear it well on all sides, for about 3 minutes per side. let it rest and season with salt and pepper. slice, serve atop the lettuce and onions, drizzle with balsamic and crumble blue cheese on top. voila! the flank steak was soooo good, nice and juicy and simple, and worked great with the lettuce and red onions and blue cheese gave it just a bit of a bite. if you like your meat a little more cooked, cook it for a couple extra minutes on each side - this was very rare, but that's the way (uh huh uh huh) i like it.

all right! i'll attempt a 100 degree outfit post from the firey pits of new york city tomorrow. stay tuned!

xo audrey