Making Gnocchi Pasta by Hand!!

It's funny how things evolve from one thing into another! I received a couple of boxes of Tastefully Simple's Chicken and Dumpling Soup for winning a contest. I made the soup for my family, and to be honest, it was terrible! It was a perfectly good waste of chicken and water, just yucky. Everyone ate, just because it was dinner, but we didn't even save the leftovers.....and, it's expensive at $8.99/package. Lucky for me I didn't pay for it.

Since that fiasco, I had been thinking that surely I couldn't do worse at making chicken and dumpling soup from scratch. That was the plan when I set out and started boiling a chicken. I boiled the chicken and let it cool, and then assigned my son Conner to pick the meat from the bones while my hubby and I were on a date last week. To quote Conner "ew, gross!". I told him to deal with it, he's a boy after all, and how does he think chicken gets into our soups? A real teaching moment.

K, so the chicken sat in the broth for a couple more days in the fridge before I got around to using it. I kept rolling ideas around in my head and deciding exactly what kind of chicken soup I wanted to add my dumplings to. Nothing really jumped out at me, so I kept thinking and looking online for recipes.

My husband loves the gnocchi soup at Olive Garden, and I've been thinking for some time about trying my hand at making gnocchi from scratch. You can see where this is going.... I was pondering the soup, and the gnocchi idea just kept nagging at me. Soooo....of course I had to make chicken gnocchi soup, and pitch the dumpling idea altogether this time around. Gnocchi are really little dumplings anyway, right?

If you have never tasted fresh made gnocchi, you are so in for a treat should you try your hand at this! I have never in my life tasted such tender, delicious little pillows of perfection. This soup was so good that my family fought over the leftovers and begged me to try making gnocchi chicken Alfredo and substituting gnocchi for spaghetti with my spaghetti sauce. It really was not all that time consuming, really, no...really! I spent probably 2 hours total in the kitchen from start to finish, and keep in mind I was a beginner, never making this before. I have never been that big of a fan of gnocchi until I tried these!

For the uninitiated, gnocchi are little pillows of pasta made mostly from potato, with a little flour to bind the potato together (as to not crumble while cooking) and, in the case of my gnocchi, also an egg. I found a gnocchi recipe on this blog, which frankly scared me silly after reading this:

• "Gnocchi recipes aren't for the faint of heart. Many, many things can go awry. I'm not trying to scare you off or dissuade you, I just want you to know what you are in for. Gnocchi-making takes practice, patience, and persistance. At their best potato gnocchi can be light and delicate. At their worst, dense, rubbery, and/or soggy. The very worst are the gnocchi that come apart in the boiling water before they even reach your plate."

Yikes! I was already boiling my potatoes....what had I gotten myself into? The soup was in the works and I was ready to go. I highly suggest, for those who want to try their hand at gnocchi making, to carefully read that blog post at least a couple of times.

I am lucky enough to have a potato ricer. I've actually been lucky enough to have stored one for years, having been told once by Martha Stewart on some cooking show that every cook worth anything should own a ricer. I didn't want to be ashamed should Martha come knocking, so I dutifully purchased a ricer only to continue mashing my potatoes the old fashioned way....by getting a man to do it!

Who knew, that some day I would decide to make gnocchi and that a ricer would indeed become very handy. You see, when making gnocchi pasta, it is very important that your mashed potatoes have no lumps, and a ricer is perfect for that. The blogger I got the recipe from uses a couple of forks to mash her potatoes, but trust me, a ricer is not expensive, and a huge time saver on the potato mashing step of the recipe.

I won't go into the gnocchi recipe details here because she does a fabulous job on her blog and you can pop over there to read all about it.

So, in spite of being skeptical of the outcome, once my potatoes were cooked, I continued with my gnocchi adventure. Below you can see a photo of my completed pasta. It was not all that hard, at least not for me. I am an experienced cook, and have made pasta a few times, and bread about a zillion times...give or take a few.

Here is a photo of the finished pasta after boiling. I was so surprised at how quickly they cooked. The blogger said that when they pop to the surface, they are done, then wait 10 seconds and remove them from the boiling water. They seriously popped up in only about 30 seconds. I was not prepared for that, but I was pleasantly surprised. I just couldn't believe that they could be done already!


I wanted to make a simple soup, simple in ingredients, and simple in taste to allow the flavor and texture of the gnocchi to become the focus of the dish. I ran through my herbs in my head and just couldn't come up with a suitable flavor that I wanted to add to the soup, so rather than make a seasoning error, I allowed the celery, onion, garlic, and carrots along with salt and pepper to flavor the soup.

I started the potatoes cooking for the gnocchi, and while they cooked and then cooled (see gnocchi recipe), I worked on the chicken soup.

Heidi's Chicken Gnocchi Soup

• 1 chicken, whole, cleaned, covered with water, and boiled until tender and coming off of bones.
  
• 8 cups reserved chicken broth from boiling chicken
• 3 cans evaporated milk
• Olive oil
  
• 4 cloves garlic, minced
  
• 1 onion, diced
  
• 6 stalks celery, diced
  
• 6 large carrots, peeled and grated
• Salt & pepper to taste
• Corn starch for thickening
  

Note: when I boiled the chicken, I didn't add any seasonings or veggies; I simply cleaned the chicken, covered it with water and boiled it until the meat was coming off of the bones. I also refrigerated the chicken in the broth overnight so I could skim the fat from the top of the pot.

To make the soup, cut the chicken meat into smaller chunks, and reserve 8 cups broth in a measuring cup. Add the garlic, onion, celery, and carrots to the cooking pot and drizzle with olive oil. Simmer the veggies until tender and add back in the broth and chicken. Add the evaporated milk and bring the soup to a simmer and allow to cook while you continue with the gnocchi making.

Once I reached the point that my gnocchi were ready to boil, I thickened my soup with a corn starch and water roux. I probably used 1/4 cup of corn starch and just enough water to make it liquid. You can add more or less, depending on how thick you want your soup. I wanted it creamy and thickened, but not too thick. It was more runny than a typical clam chowder. Once the soup was thickened, I turned it off and began boiling the gnocchi. As each batch of gnocchi finished, I just transferred them straight into the soup.

It was as easy at that, and our soup was ready to eat. Below you can see the finished product....mmmm....still makes my mouth water thinking of it!

A busy few months!

I haven't posted in a long time. It has been a really busy few months around here. We had lots of company for the holidays, starting with Thanksgiving and moving right on through the new year. With so much family coming in and out of town, cooking, baking, cleaning, and visiting, not much else got done, including blog posts.

Time to get back into the swing of things.

The biggest thing going on is mission preparations for our oldest son. We are so proud of him, and pleased at his choices in his life. He is such a fine, upstanding example to his younger brothers and to the other young men at church. I am honored to call him my son and eager to hear of his experiences in England. For those who have not heard already, Thomas will be serving for two years in Leeds, England. He reports to the Mission Training Center in Preston, England on February 19th.

We have been busy since November helping him complete the necessary preparations. It's been a whirlwind of activity; passport application, visa application, temple trip, shopping, shopping, and more shopping, helping him decide what to keep, what to take, what to save, what to give away, and what to throw away. What a difficult thing to reduce your life to a couple of suitcases and packing the rest into boxes.

I've also transformed into a knitting fool, completing several projects that I have never attempted before. I started them long before Christmas and finally finished most of them last week. I made my first pair of socks, pair of mittens, and a wonderful super long stocking cap for my dear old Dad!

Here is my son Conner (13) wearing my Dad's stocking cap. My Dad is a little crazy and loves all kinds of kooky things. He regularly wears knit caps, but I bet he doesn't have one like this one! I made it using a bunch of different colors of Swish worsted weight yarn from Knit Picks. I made random sized stripes. The pattern was from The Nauti Knitter blog. This was so fun to make, especially when I started the decreases, after a while, the rounds went very quickly. I used a pair of circular needles and the magic loop technique. It's much easier to me than using DPN's. Hope you like this Dad, it's in the mail!

I made this pair of socks using Knit Picks Gelatto self-striping sock yarn. Knit Picks has a free pattern for two-at-a-time, toe-up socks. I used that pattern with a variation for the start of the toe. The one on the pattern just didn't compute in my head, so I used google to find this one. The wonderful thing about knitting two socks at a time is that you finish the whole pair at once, so you never get the "one sock syndrome". I know that feeling well. When I finished my first mitten, I started the other half of the pair and then got distracted by new yarn and a new project and it took me a while to get back to it. My youngest son didn't like the idea of just keeping one hand in his pocket (no idea why?), so I finally made the other one. I'll post a photo later when he gets home and I can take a picture of him with his mittens.

Here's a photo of our missionary. He's all ready to go, everything but having his bags packed. I never though I would miss him so much, but I find it's a bittersweet moment. I'm so happy and proud of him, but everything I do, I realize will likely be the last time I get to do it for him. I love watching him all grown up and happy and heading off to serve, but my Mom heart is a little sad, so many memories and so much ahead of him! My first little baby is all grown up and ready to leave the nest.....my first time at this. Doesn't he just have the best hair, though? We love it!

Tomato Cream Fettucini with Sausage

Here's what's cooking tonight!

This is a wonderfully satisfying dish, flavorful but not spicy. If you like more spice, try using hot Italian sausage.

I found a recipe a number of months ago on Simply Recipes for a dish similar to this one. It sounded pretty good as I read the ingredients, so I filed it away to try it. The original recipe calls for two cans of tomatoes and 1 cup of cream. I wanted a more creamy sauce, so I used 2 cups of cream and two cans of tomatoes. The original also called for 3/4 lb. of pasta, but since I feed 4 boys, 3 of them teenagers, I opted for a full pound. Another change I made is the seasonings, I omitted the shallots and sage, adding basil instead. In addition, I used Italian style tomatoes, which I normally do not purchase. I had them on hand because I sent my son to use a coupon and I figured they would come in handy sometime. It turned out very tasty in this recipe and I might have to make them a regular item in my food storage. The best thing about this recipe is the simplicity; it has very few ingredients. It's also fairly quick to prepare and easy to cook.



Here's the details:

• 1 lb. fettuccine
  
• 1 package mild Italian sausage
• 3 cloves garlic, crushed
• 2 15-oz. cans Italian style diced tomatoes, with juice
• 2 cups heavy cream
• 2 tsp. basil
• 1/2 c. grated Parmesan cheese

Cook fettuccine in a large pot according to package directions, making sure not to overcook.

Cut skins from sausage links and place meat in medium-sized skillet along with garlic. Cook sausage and garlic until done, breaking up sausage while cooking. Add tomatoes and simmer 5 minutes. Add cream and basil. Simmer an additional 15 minutes; sauce will become thinner when cooking.

Drain pasta and return to pot. After sauce finishes simmering, remove from heat. Sprinkle grated cheese over pasta and pour hot sauce over the top. Stir until pasta is well coated and let sit 5 minutes. Stir once more and transfer to serving dish. If desired, add more grated cheese on top or pass grated cheese when serving.

Bon appetite!

Brandon Strikes Again!!

Poor Brandon!! This photo from a couple of months ago shows Brandon and Rudy. If you look at Brandon's cheek, you can see the very beginnings of a nasty encounter with poison oak. He ended up being a pretty miserable little boy for over a week. This rash blistered up and turned into scabs. He also had some swipes on his arms. The worst part was the rash that covered his body from head to toe and itched like mad.

I was sitting up with him for two nights. He was alternating crying because Benadryl tastes bad and because he was itching, which is worse? He couldn't decide, the itching or the Benadryl. Eventually the itching won out and he took the medicine, then he could finally sleep. Brandon loves making forts and hideouts in the woods, but we need to check more carefully before he ventures out to see whether he's going to be encountering more of this yucky stuff.

So the real story happened last Friday: We have an old heat pump that was installed in 1991, so it could really die any time, though it's been working very well since we bought the house nearly 2 years ago. There are lots of incentives right now to purchase a new one, so we decided to look into it, just to get more information.

I had an appointment to get a quote on Friday morning. The guy came to the door and knocked. I didn't hear the knock since we have a big house and I was down in the office. Brandon was happy to answer the door, he's not a bit shy and loves to hold conversations. So, the heating guy asked Brandon to get his Mom, and here was Brandon's response:

"My Mom can't come to the door today. She's locked in the dungeon. We are not even allowed to give her bread and water, but she can have all the rats she wants to eat."

Luckily, the heating guy thought this was the funniest thing he had ever heard and thought Brandon was one of the brightest kids he's ever met. I think Brandon needs to write a book to put that superb imagination to good use!

My First Venture into Pasta Making

I have had a Kitchenaid mixer for many years and use it constantly for everything from breads to cakes, frostings to cookies, and anything else you can think of. My hubby bought me the pasta maker attachment set a few years ago and I've never broken it out of the box. It has been cold and rainy here, which made me crave those thick homemade noodles in a nice hearty soup. I never purchase that type of pasta in the stores because I feed 4 boys, so the cost is just prohibitive. I am also a thrifty gal, so I buy only things that are on sale for a great price and keep a good food storage on hand, including dozens of bags of pasta I picked up for $.50 each.

This day, I just got the kick in the pants I needed to break out the pasta maker because I just couldn't get those noodles out of my head.


Making pasta was much easier than I thought. I just followed the basic egg pasta recipe that came in the Kitchenaid booklet along with my pasta attachments. The ingredients are simply egg, salt, flour, and water. It's so easy and cleanup isn't bad. I cut my noodles into fairly short lengths and tossed them with a big of flour so they wouldn't stick together


Here is my soup, it turned out exactly like I thought and was a huge hit with the family.

Ingredients:

• 1 package mild Italian sausage (you can use hot if you prefer)
• 1 medium onion chopped as desired
• 2-4 stalks celery, sliced
• 2-4 carrots cut into chunks (I used baby carrots halved lengthwise)
  
• 3 Tbsp good quality beef base
• 1 can diced tomatoes (I used petite diced)
• 1 Tbsp basil flakes
  
• 1/2 batch of homemade pasta (probably 2 cups or so)

Brown sausage and onions together and drain grease. Add beef base, celery, carrot, water, tomatoes and basil. Simmer until veggies are tender. Add pasta and cook just a few minutes, until pasta is done.

I love to serve this with my version of Red Lobster's Cheddar Bay biscuits or homemade, hot crunchy French bread. (Recipe to follow in a future post.)

Our New Addition to the Family!

I know what you're thinking, but it's not quite what you think!


Here's the newest member of the family. After many years of thinking about it, planning for it, and hitting roadblocks, we finally took the dog plunge. Meet Rudy.

He's an adorable 15-week-old Golden Retriever puppy. He's seriously the sweetest thing, and I'm not even a dog person! He's a mellow dog, very curious but very well behaved. He's really not the typical hyper puppy I've been expecting. He's already had some training, is mostly house-broken, and will follow simple commands. He's only barked once so far and that was this morning when he first spied his "people" from his crate. He's just a quiet sweetheart!

The boys are loving having him around, the cats not so much. He's very nice to cats, just curious about them. The cats are not at all curious about him, nor are they shy about telling Rudy who is boss around here.

Rudy, formerly known as Barry, was supposed to be a breeding and show dog, but due to some, uh, issues with his man parts isn't qualified in that department. That's just fine for us because we wanted to have him neutered anyway. We couldn't keep the name Barry because my brother is named Barry. We talked about names all the way home from the breeder's place. Some runner-up names were Denny, Doobie, and Dewey.

He's settling in very well and we are quickly learning not to leave any legos, socks, or other goodies laying on the floor. That's fine with me because I've been harping on that for years. Who knew it would take a dog for me to get my way!

Welcome Rudy, and here's to many happy years!

Hats Off to Me!!

I decided to knit a hat for my Dad. One problem? I have never knit a hat and didn't really understand the process and knitting physics behind hats. I looked around among the free knitting patterns on the internet and after reading quite a few patterns decided I could figure it out. I initially started following a pattern I found at Lion's website. I wasn't sure how big the hat would turn out, but since I have kids, it was no biggie if it was too small.

Below is my first attempt at a hat. I found that rib knit hats are great because they are more stretchy because the ribs want to shrink more than a stockinette knit does. For this hat, modeled by my son, Conner, I followed the directions to the letter, except I added a stripe of green. This hat is knit with Knit Picks Swish in worsted weight. The colors are Dublin and Truffle. The pattern for this hat is a simple knit 4 purl 4 repeat with 2 extra knits on the end for seaming. I quickly learned that it is much easier to knit in the round when doing hats, the seaming on this was rather a pain!


Jessica's hat: This was actually the 3rd hat I made. I found the pattern and tutorial at www.knitpicks.com under videos. It is a simple rolled brim hat, which rolls all by itself because of the nature of stockinette stitch. I used some yarn from my stash, some cheap stuff from JoAnn, but nice and warm and very pretty. I made her a scarf a couple of years ago for Christmas that was a fuzzy blue and this will go nicely with it. Off it goes to Idaho today, I'm sure she can use it out there!


Finally!!! Dad's Hat! After knitting the hat that ended up being Conner's, I decided that my Dad's hat not only had to be bigger, it needed to be a LOT bigger. I wanted to have a brim he could roll up to put a 2nd layer of knitting over his ears to keep them super warm whe he's working outside. Admittedly, the dog is not the best model, especially since his head doesn't really fit the hat. I had to stuff some bags up inside to fill up the top of the hat for a photo. What can I say? I had a lack of willing hat models (nobody else home) and the dog didn't complain!

This hat also uses Knit Picks' Swish worsted weight, I used Dublin, Truffle, and Camel. I wanted at least 2 inches to roll up on the hat, so I knit a total of 7 inches of Dublin. I knit 3 rows of the other colors for stripes and finished up the hat with Dublin. I'm very happy with the way this turned out, especially since I'm not really experienced with stripes, and this is the first hat I ever knit in the round and the first time I used double-pointed needles!!


Here's the front view! Don't you love how happy the dog looks to be wearing this hat? Well, this hat is going off to Washington today. I hope my Dad loves it!