Matt’s parents live in a prosh retirement community near West Palm Beach. The community has all the amenities of an exclusive resort, including a gated entrance, clubhouse for events, several swimming pools, a spa, internet cafe, tennis courts, etc. Everyone lives in beautifully decorated single-family homes with professional landscaping, and many houses overlook manmade lakes (watch out for alligators!).

I think the community employs a social coordinator who organizes recreational meetings (play mah jong, shoot with gun nuts enthusiasts, compete in tennis tournaments, etc), and the clubhouse often features movies and invites professional B-list entertainers for live performances. While Matt and I were visiting, we had the privilege (no, really) of seeing Charo perform.

Cuchi, cuchi!

Charo was, quite literally, fabulous. I had no idea she was so talented, and she blew the audience away.

The show began with the kind of burlesque, booty-shaking, Macarena-singing act that I generally expected, but she was genuinely funny and made us laugh during her monologue. She spoke about her childhood, her training as a classical guitarist (7 years studying at a school in Spain that was founded by Andres Segovia), and a little bit about her son (a college grad and [as I later learned] a drummer in a heavy metal band in Hawaii). She did semi-answer the questions everyone had about her age (“I know you’re thinking, ‘How the hell old is that bitch anyway?’”) and whether she’d had cosmetic surgery (no, she said, but added that she runs every day, drinks a lot of water, and takes vitamins). She was really high energy and never stopped moving – every picture I tried to get came out blurry. Here’s the best one:

In the second part of the show, Charo brought out an acoustic guitar and asked if we wanted to hear her play. We applauded, and she had an assistant bring out a small bolero jacket to cover up her chest and shoulders. She explained that she was taught to always show respect to the guitar and music and that this outfit was not appropriate (“Let’s face it – I look cheap in this, yes?”). She buttoned her sleeves and began to play flamenco music. And she was great! I could hardly believe my ears. I even bought one of her CDs at the end of the show, “Charo and Guitar.”

Afterward, I read some relatively recent articles about her and an interview. I got the impression that she had been relentlessly promoted as “the sexy cuchi-cuchi girl” when she was a younger woman (however, she admitted that it paid well) and had not really been allowed professional development as a musician, despite the years of classical training. She took time away from the national entertainment scene when her son was small and semi-retired to Hawaii with her husband (running a restaurant and performing locally) until her son went to college. Since then, she’s returned to a busier performance schedule and gathering up a new generation of fans (see that Geico commercial? Or Surreal Life 3?). While I would not say she’s trying to reinvent herself exclusively as a serious musician, she does seem to be saying that there’s more to her than what we thought we knew a couple decades ago.

Charo! Whodda thunk?

Matt loves cheesecake. He even took me to Muddy Paws last year, and when does Matt seek out a specialty restaurant? (Let me answer that one – Never!)

I guessed that a homemade cheesecake was overdue. I bought a 7″ Kaiser springform pan from Kitchen Window, a fun gadget store for cooks (like Sur La Table or Williams Sonoma). I pulled out the New Best Recipe and tried their New York cheesecake. It is definitely not for the health conscious. I halved the recipe (original recipe shown below – suitable for a 9″ pan).

Crust
5 T unsalted butter, melted
4 oz graham crackers (8 whole crackers), ground to crumbs
1 T sugar

Filling
2 1/2 lbs cream cheese – cut into 1″ chunks, room temp
1/8 t salt
1 1/2 c (10.5 oz) sugar
1/3 c sour cream
2 t lemon juice
2 t vanilla extract
2 large egg yolks, room temp
6 large eggs, room temp

Heat oven to 325 F. Spray 9″ springform pan with oil-flour spray (like Baker’s Joy) or coat with melted butter. Combine crust ingredients and toss with a fork until evenly moistened. Empty crumbs into pan and press (use a measuring cup bottom and spoon to distribute crumbs evenly). Bake for ~13 minutes or until fragrant and brown around the edges. Cool on a wire rack while making the filling. Change oven temperature to 500 F.

When making filling, the bowl must be scraped repeatedly to ensure complete mixing.

Beat cream cheese at medium-low for 1 minute, scrape. Add salt and about half the sugar, beat 1 minute, scrape. Add remaining sugar, beat 1 minute, scrape. Add sour cream, lemon juice, vanilla, beat 1 minute, scrape. Add egg yolks, beat 1 minute, scrape. Add 2 eggs, beat 1 minute, scrape; repeat until all eggs are added. Filling should be runny and homogeneous.

Place pan on a rimmed sheet. Spray sides of pan with oil-flour spray (or melted butter). Pour in filling. Bake for 10 minutes and reduce heat to 200 F (do not open the oven). Bake until center of the cake registers 150 F (stick probe in via the side if possible), ~1 1/2 hrs. Higher temps will cause cake to crack. Cool at room temp for ~3 hrs. Run a knife around the edge of the pan, cover in plastic wrap, refrigerate for at least 3 hrs. Bring cake out of fridge ~30 min before serving.

Hah! What is wrong with this picture?!

The cake rose above the rim of the pan but did not spill. It sank back down after cooling. I think I looked at the cake ~60 minutes into the bake time; it seemed woobly and underdone, so I didn’t measure the temp at that time, but by 70 minutes, the San Andreas fault had developed. It still tasted great, and if the texture was “wrong,” neither of us noticed.

I’m finally back from my week-long trip to Florida! I wrote a bunch of ‘blog posts in advance and set them to publish on different dates, so I betcha didn’t even realize I was away, eh? The problem with vacations is that I end up unable to answer most of the email that comes in while I am gone (and, in this case, the preceding week as well). If you wrote or commented in the past 2 weeks, I’ll be answering you presently. Thank you for your patience.

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A cranky rant about email etiquette is next – I have received a few somewhat gritty notes recently. If I do not know you, if we have not met in person or communicated by email before, I would ask that you add a “please” and a “thank you” when you make requests. Really. Tell me who you are and why you are asking someone you don’t know to look up information for you. I don’t need to know your life story, but I also am not obligated to answer basic questions about knitting or to provide microscopic descriptions of the Drudik wheel to complete strangers. I typically will do so anyway (information needs to be free[-d]), but a blunt demand for a description of blocking is unlikely to engender a sympathetic (or detailed) response. I’ve gotten a few emails like that this month, and I want to nip this in the bud.

Now that I’ve said that, I also don’t want to scare off someone who really has a question about reading charts or is thinking about getting on the waiting list for a Drudik wheel. If I think you are asking in earnest, I will bend over backward to assist in your education. I will point you to resources and explain things in excruciating detail if I think it is helpful to you. So don’t hesitate to write. Just be polite, that’s all I’m asking.

I also want to thank the people who have taken the time to email pics or notes about their DNA scarves. It delights me to no end that this pattern remains popular, even though ~7 years have passed since it was first published. Thank you. You have more than made up for the grumpiness that I felt after answering the “demand-y” emails.

I decided to do Eunny’s mitten pattern as a little pick-me-up because I could use a little knitdistraction. Right in the beginning of the pattern, it says something like she assumes you know how to do a tubular cast on. I read that, and I’m all yeah, I know my tubular cast ons and tubular cast offs. But it’s been a few years, so I did a quickie refresher by checking teh interwebs, and I find clear and similar instructions here and here, so I’m all set.

Except I overlooked some little thing about a stockinette tubular cast on vs a ribbed tubular cast on, and it won’t. fit. over. my. hand. Great googly moogly!

I ripped it out, followed Montse Stanley’s tubular cast on (the one with the yarnovers), and now it fits over the moose knuckles.

Because I can’t seem to leave any pattern alone, I also monkeyed with the colors. In an attempt to use stash yarn, I pulled out my palette of J&S Shetland samples and picked what I thought were coordinating colors. The first attempt (unpictured) combined grey and lavendar for the background and a series of purplish-pinks for the contrast. The background colors were too different in value and formed stripes that reminded me of sports socks. The next try came out much better – the changes are so subtle that I’m not even sure I can see them.

The color is pretty accurate in the last photo. I like!

I can’t remember the first time I tasted a slice of Greek spinach pie, but I’m certain that I was hooked with the initial bite. This is so easy to make, I wonder why I don’t do it more frequently.

1 lb baby spinach
3 cloves garlic
1 bunch scallions
1 bunch parsley
1 pck fresh dill (chopped, this is ~1/4 c)
8 oz feta cheese
fresh-cracked black pepper (to taste)
[fresh-grated nutmeg is a common option, but I omit it]
2 eggs
Olive oil and a pastry brush (or cheat and use Pam spray)
1 box phyllo dough (check the freezer section, usually by the pastries)

Heat oven to 350 F.

Chop garlic, scallions, parsley, dill, and cheese. Saute garlic and spinach in a little olive oil until the spinach is wilted. Remove from heat, add scallions, parsley, dill, cheese, and pepper. The salt from the cheese will cause a lot of liquid to come out of the spinach. You could plop the greens in a strainer or squeeze the liquid out with your hands (more effective by squeezing). Scramble 2 eggs and blend into the spinach mix.

Separate the phyllo dough into 2 stacks. Keep 1 stack covered. Oil a 9×13 baking sheet, lay down 2 sheets of dough. Oil the top layer and add 2 more sheets. Alternate 2 sheets of dough with a coating of oil until half the dough (1 stack) is in the pan. Spread the spinach mixture evenly across the pan. Top with remaining dough (spreading a coat of oil every other sheet). Bake until golden brown and crispy. I used a convection setting, so I’m not sure of the time for a conventional oven – start with 30 minutes and keep an eye on it, I guess?

The dough will be flaky and crispy, and the spinach filling will be salty and cheesy. It’s wonderful!

For my latest batch, I wrapped 1/4 c of filling burrito-style in a doubled sheet of unoiled dough. (It’s about the same size as a “hot pocket” sandwich.) After wrapping, they were sprayed lightly with olive oil, parbaked at 350 F for 15 min, and individually wrapped and frozen after cooling. To eat, just bake at 350 F for 30-40 min or until golden brown.

Remember Matt’s sweater? I had made the back too long and irreversibly fulled it (sad tale of woe here), only to find that I had made egregious pattern errors (another woeful tale here). I knit another version (begun here), and I think I did OK.

I washed and blocked it a couple times while I was working on the piece to ensure that I was on track. I think it’s at the correct length (saddle sleeves, so no shoulder shaping), but I’m not going to bind off, just in case. What a relief it is to see all the cables twisting in the correct direction.

I tried making pita bread last summer, but I ended up with… Well, I don’t know, pan-fried dough, I guess. It was good, but I wanted something that actually had a pocket on the inside. This time, I was successful!

Isn’t that awesome?!

The recipe come from Saveur, a cooking magazine that I really hated. (Pretentious, for one. Unappealing recipes. A lot of advertisements. Sections on travel were useless to me.) I bought a 2-year subscription because I felt sorry for the door-to-door salesman who pitched it to me. (One year left to go…) I’m so glad that I got at least 1 good recipe out of it. They credited Claudia Roden for this one.

1 pkg yeast (I used rapid rise, but I recommend using regular yeast)
1/4 tsp sugar
2 c whole wheat flour
1 1/2 c bread flour
2 1/2 c all purpose flour
2 T olive oil
1 T kosher salt

The original recipe called for 6 c of unbleached all purpose flour, but I wanted to make a whole wheat version and also ran out of bread flour.

Proof yeast with sugar and 1/2 c of warm water. After 20 minutes, add 2 c of warm water. With the mixer on low, add 1 c of flour at a time, kneading until incorporated. Cover and let the dough rest for 30 minutes. ETA: Add the oil and salt. Knead again until dough is smooth and elastic (medium speed, 7-10 min). Cover and let rise until doubled.

Heat a pizza stone and oven to 500 F. I let this heat for a long time (~45 min) to make sure the stone was ready. Separate the dough into 16 balls, keeping the unused dough covered. Flour each dough ball and roll into a 7″ circle. Cover and let rest for 20 minutes.

Slap 2 or 3 circles on the pizza stone and bake for 4 minutes. (I had a hard time keeping the dough from stretching when I transferred it to the stone. Maybe I rolled it too thin?) They will puff up like magic! This was the most supercool baking moment EVAR.

I buttered them after I took them out of the oven. So good! I think I will have to make falafel again.

I should qualify the title of this post to “Chana saag, midwestern style.”

I’ve recently learned that a few of the folks who check out this site are vegetarian, so I thought I’d post more veggie-friendly recipes as I made them. This was loosely based on a recipe from Cooking Light, but I modified it enough that the original is no longer recognizable.

This is one of those pseudo-recipes that list ingredients without quantifying them well, but I think the proportions can vary widely and still produce a great result.

Saute half an onion with a dollop of oil, and add 2 cloves of minced garlic and a thumb-sized piece of ginger (grated). Mix in tomato paste (2 T?) and a little bit of water to help it dissolve. Add 1 can of drained and rinsed garbanzo beans and 4 packed cups of fresh baby spinach. Cook over low heat until spinach is wilted. Sprinkle salt to taste (1 tsp kosher salt) and add some lemon juice. I put in chili powder (hence, “midwestern style”) for flavor because I totally forgot that I had garam masala in the cupboard!

Still, it was quite good. Leftovers heated up well, too.

Charlie is not the best at grooming. He’s either too chunky or too lazy (or both), and over time, he starts to look a little scruffy. I found a rubber dog mitt that does wonders for pulling out the excess fur. It costs ~$5 and looks like this:

After I finish with Charlie, the floor looks like this:

It’s as if we had a third cat that exploded in the living room.

Some of you may not know that my sister is a professional violinist. She sent me an email detailing a benefit concert that I’d like to bring to your attention (she will be performing in the orchestra).

The concert will be at Carnegie Hall on January 22, 2007.

Click here for more information about the sponsoring organization, the Democracy Council.

Click here to buy tickets.