Meatless Monday....or Bust!

So this Meatless Monday was a BUST!
I was not happy with pretty much anything about it!
Here we go....

Breakfast:

Shirred Eggs

I went with my current Meatless Monday favorite, shirred eggs. I topped the eggs with parmesan cheese and parsley pesto. I'm not sure why, but something about it just didn't do it for me today. :-(

Lunch:

Broccoli and Cheese Soup, Grilled Cheese

For lunch I brought broccoli and cheese soup and a grilled cheese. This didn't go well  either.  

How do you mess up a grilled cheese? 

I made the sandwich in the panini maker. The first go round I did not cook it long enough. The cheese was no where near as ooey and gooey as I prefer. I stuck the grilled cheese back into the panini maker, left the kitchen for a few minutes, and came back to a panini maker filled with cheese in every ridge and two pieces of bread. All of my cheese had melted out of the bread! 

Ugggh!

(Picture was pre panini maker disaster)

Dinner:

(Picture courtesy of 101 Cookbooks)

Gnocchi 

So when it came to dinner I needed something to cheer me up. I decided to make delicious potato gnocchi. Lover boy and I both LOVE gnocchi. Now I have never made gnocchi before from scratch. I've seen it made on television, read countless articles and recipes, and have watched just about every contestant on Top Chef bomb at it. 

I get it....it's hard to perfect. 

Apparently you need to be an Italian grandmother to make delicious, homemade gnocchi. This is exactly why I chose this recipe! How to Make Gnocchi like an Italian Grandmother Recipe

You know me... I like a challenge. I said to myself, "I can do this. I can make anything!" So off I went......

As I prepared the potatoes and made the dough everything seemed to be going just fine. The dough was just floured yet tacky enough. I rolled the dough out, cut it in sections, and began to shape each gnocchi. This seemed to be working out well for my first time. 

Just as every recipe said....this is something that you perfect over time. After working with the gnocchi you realize what works and what doesn't.

In walks lover boy....with his know it all self. :-) Here he goes telling me how gnocchi is an Italian art form and all about his grandma making it when he was a child.

You're grandma has a gnocchi recipe?! Why'd ya wait til now to tell me this?!

Still, so far so good.

Now it's time to cook the gnocchi.

I boiled the first batch in the same starchy water I used to cook the potatoes. I let them rise to the top and spooned them out as they floated. Luckily, I had a lot of extra gnocchi...

.....MUSH!

Now what?

I knew that I wanted to serve the gnocchi with a brown butter, sage sauce. I already had some butter and sage simmering in a pan. I threw the second batch of gnocchi straight into the butter and let it sauté for about 5-10 minutes. This batch came out a lot better!...a lot more edible!

As far as the finished product goes, I think I did ok. Just ok. I gave myself a C on the grading scale. I had an edible finished product, but not something I'd like to brag about. I think it still had too much of a potatoey taste to it, but the brown butter sage was just enough to correct that.

Overall I think that the gnocchi won this battle, but I gave it a good fight.

And I will be back!

Gnocchi