Potato Gnocchi

With a surplus of potatoes, I've been thinking of ways of eating them (other than mashed potato, even though I love mashed potato), and one of the ideas I found was potato gnocchi. I'm not really a gnocchi fan, since I don't have an emotional association with it. In addition, since we lack sauce in the house, the gnocchi is just another carbohydrate at dinnertime that pairs well with spicy stir fried Chinese food.

I agree with the recipe; the potatoes should've been baked instead of boiled because that way, they would've been drier and I wouldn't've obtained soggy, gruel-like gnocchi. Ah well. At least they stayed in shape (irregular) and didn't disintegrate in the boiling water. Maybe I should've baked them or fried them.

I don't think that this was the most appetising way of using potatoes, so I'm never making potato gnocchi again. Instead, I'm just going to make a freezer-shelf full of potato cake (tomorrow's post), which everyone, even MY SISTER, enjoyed.

INGREDIENTS

800 g mashed potato

~140 g whole-wheat flour (just keep adding until the dough is malleable and not too sticky)

oregano

pepper

salt

METHOD

1. Mix everything.

2. Pluck small balls from the dough and stick into a pot of boiling water.

3. Take out after a few minutes.

CHILI SIN CARNE!

CHILI sans la viande - without animal pieces...instead, there are roman beans and lima beans and TVP and pickles and artichokes and tomato and parmesan and onion and crushed up tortilla chips [the leftovers].

A.k.a., awesome-everything-I-love-chili!

In fact, this chili even looks better than these here! YAY! This is just to prove to my brother that my plating, in fact, is not substandard [I've never really liked the idea of plating though, because it makes food appear more as an ornament than as a food].

Onions, artichokes, pickles, getting "gently browned"

Rehydrated TVP with dried chili and tomato paste marinade.

Adding the lima beans!

Ingredients:

1. A LOT of water. Keep adding cups of water throughout the.... 3-4 hours it takes to cook. I was initially going to make tomato/chili soup but that would mean that I used twice the amount of water. Which would've required a larger pot. Which I do not possess.

2. Lots of tomato paste!

3. Garlic

4. Onions! LOTS!

5. Pickles

6. Artichokes in oil - we have a jar of them. I don't know why, since no one in the family except for me and my brother has actually ever heard of the term "artichoke" before. I don't know who bought these... just that they've been sitting in the fridge for a while. Well, at least it covers the "oil" part of the chili.

7. Two cups of Roman beans. Soak these for a few hours. They take AGES to cook.

8. Half a cup of lima beans. They swell TREMENDOUSLY when soaked for a few hours. Literally 2.3 times their original sizes.

9. Half a cup of dried TVP, mixed with two cups of water and one scoop of tomato paste and two packets of dried chili. This way, the flavour gets "infused". Supposedly.

10. One cut up Boca burger since I dislike eating them grilled.

11. Leftover tortilla chips with the salt at the bottom.

12. Herbs - oregano, basil.

13. Quinoa, just because.

Method:

Cook everything on low heat for a few hours in a giant pot. Cook for an hour, turn off the heat, and go to XC practice for three hours. Come back later at around 9:30pm and continue letting the stuff simmer on low heat, adding water every now and then. When the roman beans are done, the chili is ready. The roman beans determine the cooking time!!

I wonder who else makes chili at 10:41 pm.

I ended up with a lot of chili. Look at that! Three boxes of chili. BUT IT'S AWESOME BECAUSE I LOVE CHILI!

The last time I made chili was the first day of school last September. It wasn't as great as this one. This one is "awesome-sauce"ly thick and beany and protein-filled! And it DOES NOT taste bland... for those of you who think vegetarian stuff is "rabbit food". It is NOT.

CHIPS!

Front.


Back.

I've fallen in love with a new food. TUSCAN HERB PITA CHIPS! By Stacy's. The company proclaims that it bakes the chips and has a "zesty blend of basil, oregano and garlic". In all honesty, I taste zero oregano, a pinch of garlic, and perhaps breathe a few fumes of basil through the back of my nose...
I'm kind of irked at the company, actually. Not really despise, but quite unhappy... because the back of the bag lauds: "The Art of Basic".
If by "basic", you mean "enriched wheat flour", "rosemary extract", "ascorbic acid" and "compressed yeast"... I mean, these are made out of basic ingredients, but they themselves aren't basic. It's like giving you a plastic bag and saying, "Hey, here's a puddle of petrol for you to start a fire!". It's not completely basic.

Another thing is that on its website, there is a recipe for making a vanilla smoothie. The ingredients and plating do not include any pita chips. I don't understand how that meshes with pita chips... It promotes vanilla, ice cream... fruit... milk... even ice! but not pita chips.

But without analysing them too much, they taste so light and crisp-bready and wonderful. I've fallen in love with these junky pita chips [okay, better than Fritolay can ever be].