Gnocchi Town

Sooooo, I am officially home. I went to In-N-out. Uhh, I missed you so much! It was better than i remembered! I havent found a cheap burger that can ever beat In-N-Out's anywhere, let alone anywhere near school. . So anyways, I decided to make gnocchi for dinner. It was pretty easy and the recipe I followed from 101 Cookbooks. I used yukon golden potatoes, and peeled them and boiled them instead of baking them and it turned out good. The blogger give gives the option of either boiling them or sautéing them, so I chose to make them a little crispy and sauté. For the meal sauteed some zucchini and squash in a separate pan and combined that with left over sliced up chicken, lemon zest and pesto. Add the gnocchi, sprinkle with some shaved parmesan cheese and voile! delish. Brother and my dad liked it! No one else was here to taste-test for me, so I'll have to wait 'till later for a final verdict, but I'd make it again!


Mash potatoes, and create a mound. Pour egg and flour on top of mound, and use a spatula to combine.

Next: roll out and cut into bite size pieces.

Saute until they are browned nicely on each side.

Add the rest of the ingredients, toss and your ready to eat.

Second Day

Today was full of surprises. Christine came down to visit my sister and Collin came down with her to surprise Tara. After meeting them all at the gallery in north Hollywood that my sister works at, we decided to grab some lunch at a burger place called Umami. Tara and I split a turkey miso burger that was pretty good, and we all split an order of my favorite, sweet potato fries. After sprinting to my car because my meter was up, I started driving south, blasting country music, on my way to Trader Joes.

Today was my second day and I was out of my realm of comfort. I made homemade pasta. I used a recipe from Mario Batali, but it's the widely known recipe that is used by most people. The simple recipe only called for two ingredients: eggs and flour. I started by making a well with the flour and cracked the eggs inside the well. The recipe instructed me to mix the eggs in the well with a fork, but I think I made my flour well too shallow because the eggs started to come over the side when I was mixing the eggs. But I did some patchwork (added an additional egg) and it all worked out. I had to knead the dough out for a long time, (I better have some serious muscles tomorrow) and then let it rest for about 20 minutes. Then I split the dough in half and rolled out the first half, cut into strips and dropped 'em in boiling water. It took about the same amount of time as dry pasta from the store.



























With the homemade pasta I made a recipe from Giada DeLaurentis. It's lemon pasta with shrimp and arugula. I think it was a success because everyone liked it. It got much better reviews than my butterscotch pudding, but they were both good. The pasta was super delicioso! And for dessert we had left over espresso-cinnamon cookies and ice cream. delish. All in all, a good meal. My sister made a salad with left over veggies.

Can't wait for tomorrow for my dads' famous pancakes and the strawberry festival in Oxnard!