Not So Gnocchi

So I have really been wanting gnocchi and pink sauce for the past week or so. I love gnocchi, it's one of my favorite things to get at an Italian restaurant. And a few years ago David, Lori's husband, had a cooking class for us where he made gnocchi. So I thought, I have nothing else to do tonight, why not, I'm going to try to make gnocchi. Need I remind you of my not so hot cooking skills? Didn't think so. Anyway, I got my (3) potatoes and boiled them with no problems. Then after I took them out of the water, I took a wash cloth and rubbed the skins off. So at this point, I'm feeling pretty confident. I was like, "hell yeah I can cook, you don't even know." OK, so far so good. Next came the mashing of the potatoes. I read online that it works best through some kind of pasta machine thing that I didn't even know how to pronounce the name, let alone what the thing was. So I scratched that idea. Then a few other websites said to use a fork to mash up the potatoes. Again, I'm mashing them up, no problems, feeling good. OK, now's the tricky part. Adding the flour. David said to use 1 part potato to 3 parts flour, but all the stuff I read online said that the amount of flour is different based on so many variables so it's better just to do it by feel. Problem #1. I was scared to add too much flour because I was sure that my gnocchi were going to be heavy and nasty so of course I added too little. But I'll get back to that later. As I was mixing (kneading?) my dough my confidence level was dropping but I was still feeling pretty good. After all, I'm almost done, right? Here are some pictures of my dough and the gnocchi that I had already cut. Pretty much once you get the dough to the perfect consistency (whatever that is) you roll it out into long rolls (like your making spaghetti with play dough) and then cut the roll into little nubs. You drop the nubs into boiling water, a few minutes (seconds) later they float to the top and voila! you have gnocchi. And by "you" I mean literally, you, not me. I got mushy potato nasty. And...this is why I don't cook for anyone else but myself. You know I ate it anyway, and I saved the rest of what I didn't eat too. I'm going to try to do something with it tomorrow I guess. I suppose it wasn't a total loss because I was kind of hungry and now I'm pretty full. And, like I said, I wasn't doing anything anyways so might as well make some nasty gnocchi.

Things that are pretty annoying right now

First is a dog named Daisey. As previously discussed, she is deaf (for the most part) and her new thing to do is to whine. She's always been a pretty vocal dog even before the deafness set in so I'm not entirely surprised that she chose whining as her method of torture for me. Oh it can't be that bad, you say? No, this is not just every now and then whining when she has to go out or something like that. This is constant every time she exhales kind of a whine. At first I was kind of concerned. The nurse in me was thinking "does she have stridor? is there something wrong with her airway?" Oh no, that's not the case either. The dog is perfectly comfortable laying on her pillow (yes, that's right, I said "her" pillow) and whining. The only time when she doesn't whine is when there is someone else other than Nick or myself with her. Which I think she does so that other people won't believe us when we complain about it. She's that smart. And so far her evil plan has worked. I realize that she probably likes how the vibrations feel on her throat but this is rediculous. I'm currently weighing the pros and cons of a shock collar.

The second thing is our bread machine. Everyone knows that I do not enjoy cooking. If I could eat bread and pasta with butter and parmesan for the rest of my life, I'd be a happy girl. So, knowing my love for bread (especially the home made kind), Nick got me a bread machine for my birthday a few years ago. Of course I was intimidated by it and so we hadn't touched it until a few months ago when Nick wanted to try it out. Let me tell you the bread that he makes in that machine is increadable. I have tried a few times and for some reason my bread is just not as good. So today, I really felt like some fresh bread. I brought out the machine, followed the directions perfectly. I even sprinkled the ingredients into the bucket thing just like Nick does. And how does my bread turn out? Crappy! I just don't understand why I can't do this! It shouldn't be that complicated. You put the stuff in the machine and three and a half hours later, you have bread. Apparently that is a little too complicated for my cooking skills. Here is a picture of my nasty bread. BTW, it actually tastes pretty good and I'm still going to eat it!