Sicilian Ricotta Cheesecake

This is the most refreshing dessert for a hot summer day. It's not super sweet, but very rich. The recipe comes from an old Italian man, which I think makes it taste better!

• 2 pounds ricotta cheese
• 2/3 cup white sugar
• 1/3 cup all-purpose flour
• 5 eggs
• 3 teaspoons amaretto
  
• 1 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1/8 teaspoon salt

1. Preheat oven to 300 degrees F. Butter and flour a 9 1/2 inch springform pan, and tap out excess flour.
2. Place the ricotta in a large mixing bowl, and stir it as smooth as possible. Stir the sugar and flour together thoroughly into the ricotta. Stir in the eggs 1 at a time. Blend in the amaretto, vanilla, and salt. Pour batter into the prepared pan.
3. Bake in the center of the oven for about 1 1/2 hours, until a light golden color. Make sure the center is fairly firm, and the point of a sharp knife inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool on a wire rack. It will sink slightly as it cools. Cover, and chill till serving time.

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Funny Story for Good Ol' Alta Hawks

So I was driving and got stuck behind this old man who was going like 20 miles under the speed limit. I was so annoyed! So I changed lanes and pulled up to the old man at a stop light, and guess what I saw ... Mr. Ward, eating an ice cream cone! I laughed and wasn't mad any more. Who could be angry with Mr. Ward?!

Twilight Concert

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Power Boxing Ourselves

The renters below have a home theater system right below our bedroom, and they really like to watch movies. But not only do they watch movies all the time, they watch them with the volume so loud our bedroom shakes.

So last night at about 1:00 a.m. one of their movies was still blasting and Johnny and I couldn't sleep. So what did we do? Johnny got a flashlight, went outside, and power boxed our house. It worked! Hopefully the renters just think the thunderstorm made the power go out. But the movie stayed off and we were able to go to bed!

Oh My, Mamma Mia!

Best movie of the summer, hands down. Not only were all the old ladies in the theater dancing in their seats wishing they were young again, but Johnny, despite his best effort to keep his manliness in check, was singing every song under his breath. Seriously, such a good movie. Corny, like every good musical should be, and has me still singing the songs days later.

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Johnny wake surfing--he learned to do a 360!

I tried to be sneaky about going to the bathroom, but as soon as my brother Kash saw me he alerted the 10 other people on the boat of what was going on. Thanks, bro.

More photos to follow...

Fashion Books for Summer Reading

I came across this Vogue article at stlye.com and loved it. For all you fashion gurus, here's a few books you should add to your summer reading list:

The Enchantress of Florence, Salman Rushdie (Knopf Canada, $26)

Florence was a bit off the beaten path for womenswear, but Diane von Furstenberg still chose the Tuscan capital, where her wrap dress was born, to hold her show. It put us into a Medici state of mind—which got us thinking about the latest offering from Salman Rushdie. On the short list for the Man Booker Prize, The Enchantress wends its way from Renaissance Italy to the court of Mughal emperor Akbar, and with its fantastical-historical blend of romance and globe-trotting exotica, it just might be 2008's perfect beach read.

The Alexandria Quartet, Lawrence Durrell (Faber and Faber, $14)

Gilt-trimmed gowns for latter-day Cleopatras—you know, like J. Lo and Sienna—were on order at Marchesa. Fast-forward a couple millennia and Egypt has lost none of its allure…as proven by Lawrence Durrell's much-loved tetralogy. The four books (Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, and Clea) detail interlocking accounts of a love affair, and Durrell so vividly conjures the North African metropolis circa the 1940's that your body might be plodding along the L.I.E. on the Hampton Jitney, but your spirit will be soaring to the souk.

740 Park Avenue, Michael Gross (Broadway Books, $16.95)The Official Filthy Rich Handbook, Christopher Tennant (Workman Publishing, $11.95)
Richistan, Robert Frank (Crown, $24.95)

How do the women who live in Oscar de la Renta live? For a fascinating look into the Black Card and Clyde yacht world of zip code 10021, this trio of books offers a little of everything: Gross' gossipy account of the building that has housed Vanderbilts and Rockefellers, Bronfmans and Schwarzmans; Frank's look at the emotional complexities of new wealth; and Tennant's so-ironic-it-hurts primer, which spells out the secrets of the Upper East Side with annotated photographs.


The Loveliest Woman in America: A Tragic Actress, Her Lost Diaries, and Her Granddaughter's Search for Home, Bibi Gaston (William Morrow, $26.95)
The Unexpurgated Beaton: The Cecil Beaton Diaries as He Wrote Them, 1970-1980, Cecil Beaton (Knopf, $35)

Beaton's coolly flawless portraits might have been the spark for Erin Fetherston's tableaux vivants installed at Van Cleef & Arpels. That perfect surfaces can be deceiving is one of the points driven home in The Loveliest Woman, the sad story of a onetime debutante named Rosamond Pinchot Gaston, who was on intimate terms with "on tops" like Elizabeth Arden and David O. Selznick: She was "discovered" onboard a liner on the way home from France and seemed to be living a fairy tale…until her suicide at the age of 33. Less tragic, and ripe with gossip of the bon ton, whom he so ardently courted, are Beaton's own notoriously catty, and evergreen, diaries.

Three models in candy-colored dresses, shot by Cecil Beaton in 1948.

To read the full article, click here.