Minimiam

When I was a kid, I was such the sucker for miniature things. I still remember watching a documentary about an insomniac who spent his nights painting unbelievably detailed landscapes on long-grain rice with a single horse hair and feeling like my nine-year-old heart was about to explode with happiness and want (oh, how I coveted that rice). I soon outgrew this bit of madness, as it did not fit with my increasing dislike of knickknacks. But I suppose there is a part of my heart that still melts, just at the corner, when I see a neat and tiny version of something: baby shoes, petit fours, bonsai (not "BAHN-zai," my husband corrects me, bristling with irritation at the way my West Coast-Midwest accent slaughters the familiar word).

And now, thanks to a post by shaz of nook bistro, I've just seen something that surpasses microscopic paintings on rice grains: minimiam, itty-bitty plastic figurines arranged on regular-size food in some very funny compositions. My two favorites are the mountain climbers scaling a Mont Blanc (complete with confectioners' sugar flurries) and the soldier who detonates a grenade on a pomegranate, resulting in smoking, exploded fruit and a number of toy soldier casualties. The creators of minimiam are photographers Akiko Ida and Pierre Javelle, who do a lot of work for food magazines and cookbooks.

Unfortunately, the minimiam website is a bit of a pain to navigate, so if you don't have the time or patience to fiddle around, you can view most of the pictures on these two pages of the blog that shaz originally linked to. But then you miss out on the titles and some of the photographs.

So which is your favorite?