Monterey

For our last gasp at summer vacation, we scheduled one final trip and spent a few days out in Monterey, CA. This was a destination we had tried once before and had to cancel at the last minute, but this time the stars aligned, and we made it.

Not unlike San Francisco, this area can be quite cool in the summer. (Didn't Mark Twain say that the coldest winter he ever spent was a summer in San Francisco?) Even though we got a little taste of that, most of the time we were there it was sunny and gorgeous with record highs. Good for us; bad for the fires.

Like most of our vacations, this one revolved around food and some kind of sport. Ahh, the food. What's better than fresh seafood, pastas, salads, and wine? Lots of good wine. What's better is that you get to look out at all this beautiful scenery while you're enjoying it!

Besides the food, this area is known as golf heaven. The guys got in a few rounds, but I think they got the biggest kick out of walking around the Pebble Beach course. To our surprise, this gorgeous course is very accessible, and we were welcomed to walk around to our heart's content.

After having seen this course for so many years through tournament television coverage, these signature holes were familiar, but like everything else, were so much more fun to experience in person. We could have sat by this par three along the coastline all day.

Between golf days, we took a drive down to Big Sur. It was a warm, sunny day and the traffic was light, so we were able to take our time and pull off the road a few times to admire the view.

This was the perfect way to end our summer--a great summer. So, now we're home and getting ready to take our son back to college for the year.

PGA 'til You Drop

Our last week was consumed by golf, golf, and more golf.

Cleverly hidden in the center of the country, Minnesota rarely plays host to international sporting events. So when over one hundred of the greatest golfers in the world make the trek to play in your backyard, you go.

Unfortunately, it wasn't exactly in our backyard. The journey was the most trying part of the week. With the drive, traffic, road construction, and shuttles, it could be over two hours each way to the course and back. But once we arrived, it was truly a great experience. The course was beautiful, the golfers were unbelievable, the tournament itself was well run.

And Tiger-mania is alive and well. To avoid the largest crowds, we spent most of our time watching the rest of the field. When we did stick around on a hole long enough for his group play through, the flurry of activity around him was just as fascinating to watch as the man himself. Security is tight. The media coverage is phenomenal. And his fans watch his every move. (When he used the bathroom after teeing off on one hole, more people were staring at the Biff than Padraig's tee shot.) I'm sure it's good to be Tiger, but it's got to be difficult to live with that kind of attention.

After a couple of practice rounds and the opening round of the tourney, I surrendered my ticket for the weekend to my brother. By that time, I was more than happy to watch the coverage from the comfort of my own home with a new appreciation for the phenomenal skills of these elite golfers. Even HD doesn't give you an appreciation for the challenges of the course, and these guys just make it all look too easy.

Cable Chart Psychology

How can it be the last day of July already? That's a little sad, but we still have some of our best summer plans ahead for August, so I'll try not to get to down about July's demise.

It has been a good July for knitting. Hot and humid weather can be a deterrent to picking up the needles. With the cool temps we've had, a growing cardigan on my lap in the evenings actually feels good.

This morning I decided to lay out my sweater to double check that I'm still on gauge and that all of my cables are going the right way. As long as it was on the floor and my camera was nearby, I snapped a picture.


At this point in a project--when I've become very familiar with the pattern and am sailing along--I've learned from past experiences, to do some quality control. Familiarity breeds stupidity, if you know what I mean. It's no fun finding out that you zigged when you should have zagged about twenty rows back.

As I was knitting along the other day, I also got to thinking about cable chart psychology and wondered if anyone else experiences similar thoughts. Here's the thing. On most cable charts, the wrong side row is generally just knitting the knit stitches and purling the purls, so I always think of those rows as my "brain gets a rest" rows. Then I also tend to have rows in the chart that I like to knit--row 9 is quite exciting in this pattern--and rows I tend to dislike (even dread)--row 1 is the dull one in this bunch. Isn't this sad? I am probably exposing my own simple mind. I'm sure other knitters contemplate world affairs or read "War and Peace" while they work their craft.

Homemade Yogurt

Snooping around on different food blogs over the years, I came across a few people who insisted that homemade yogurt is not only the best tasting, but was easy to make. So, after reading what I could about the process, I decided to give it a try. As long as I was typing up my results, I thought I might as well share.

I settled on a recipe that started out with scalding one quart of whole milk. Using the candy thermometer, I brought the temperature of the milk to 180 degrees--following the directions exactly--but it probably isn't necessary to get it that warm. How much bad bacteria can there be in fresh, pasteurized milk? (If you know, please don't answer that hypothetical question.)

The next step was to stir in 1/3 cup of non-fat dried milk. Not everyone adds the dried milk. It boosts the protein, and I know it's weird, but I like the taste, so I went with it.

Now the mixture needs to cool off before you stir in the starter. If the milk is too hot, you'll kill your culture, and if it's too cool, nothing is going to happen. Once the milk mixture is cooled off to about 100-110 degrees, stir in a tablespoon of plain yogurt. You don't want to add too much, or the finished product could get sour. We always have Dannon's All Natural yogurt on hand. There isn't all the junk that's in most yogurts. And for this, I made sure that I used a fresh container.

At this point, I added a step of my own. I noticed that there were some solids floating around in the mixture. (Probably from when I impatiently turned the burner up to expedite the first step. Ooops.) I strained the whole works through a sieve, and you can see that was a good idea.

Now comes the fun part. I poured the mixture into two canning jars, one of which I had punched a hole in the lid to allow for the use of my thermometer.

The key at this point is to maintain the temperature of the yogurt-to-be at approximately 110 degrees for two to five hours. My first plan was to use my bread raising technique, which is to put them in the microwave over my stove with the door shut and the stove light beneath it left on. This is the perfect temperature to encourage the growth of yeast, but it turned out to be too cool for yogurt. Within a half an hour, the content of the jars had cooled to 102 degrees.

Plan B was the crock pot, and this worked great, but don't wander too far away. On low, with a semi-damp towel on the bottom as a cushion, the jars quickly came back up to temperature. By checking back periodically, I was able to maintain a fairly even temperature by turning the heat on only one more time.

From start to finish, the whole process took about five hours, but most of that time is hands-off. And now that I've done it once, I won't have to waste time working on the heat source.

Was it worth it? No question. Homemade yogurt is creamy--of course, it doesn't hurt to use whole milk--and not tart at all. It is definitely a far superior product than even the best yogurts that I've bought at the grocery store. Next time I'm going to try it with a lower fat milk, but I think I'm sold on making my own.

Breakfast this morning? Yogurt with fresh raspberries drizzled with honey. Mmmmm.

Still in the Garden

When the weeds are under control and the deadheading has been done, there's only one excuse left to linger in the garden, and that's to snap a few more pictures.

Photographs help me remember what works and what doesn't in the garden. P.D. (pre-digital) I used to take notes and make drawings of the garden, which worked to a point, but there's nothing like the real thing.

Over the years I've learned a few things. I'm a sucker for pink and blue flowers. Petunias are worth the sticky job of picking off the spent blossoms. Not everything has to have flowers. (For instance, hostas are beautiful; their flowers usually are not. I tend to cut a lot of them off before they bloom.) You should plant flowers where they want to grow. And vegetables and herbs are pretty, too.

Every year I learn something new about gardening. Mostly I've learned that it's a darn good thing I don't have to live off of what I grow. If I did, I'd have to plant a lot less flowers, and I'd be darn sick of rhubarb and lettuce by now.

Even though there are all these outside distractions, I'm still making progress on my Cable Band Cardigan. I've never knit a sweater like this before. The yoke band is knit first and then you work your way around knitting front, sleeve, back, and the other front. The yarn is great even though it has the tendency to split. It makes me look down at what I'm knitting once in awhile.

My biggest gripe about the pattern would be the lack of cable charts. I didn't want to draw them by hand, so I hit the Internet and found a program called Knit Chart Maker. It was just what I needed. A few minutes work saved me having to look back through all those written instructions. I'll have to try making my own cable designs with it some day.

Finally, last night we went and saw the latest installment in the Harry Potter series. I'd highly recommend the movie, and a bonus was all the knitted items, and Dumbledore's excitement at finding new knitting patterns!

Mother Nature's Fireworks

My thistle plant is in full bloom, and full of bees. And you know what? They're busy. Huh.

These perfect globes of color come from a plant that has to be over a hundred years old. I took a division from my Mom's, who took it from her Mother's, who probably took it from her's.

This is a plant that gives twice--once with the blossoms and again when the goldfinches come later and devour the seeds.

Another old reliable, the echinacea, is blooming, too. The birds would like me to leave this to go to seed with the rest, but it self-sows like crazy.

The garden is saying mid-July. The weather, however, feels more like early fall. It's been a cool summer. That keeps the lettuce from bolting, but my tomatoes and beans could use some heat. So could I.

It looks like the weather is going to cooperate for a family picnic we have planned for the weekend. The whole gang doesn't get together too often with lots of busy schedules, so this is a rare occasion. We're covering two birthdays and our 25th Anniversary. That quarter of a century flew by!

Enjoy the 4th!