I dream of that perfect kitchen the way some women dream of the perfect wedding. I think about it a lot. A LOT. Good news is that I can see it in my head. Bad news is that I can't convey it to Rick 'cause he's a guy which means he's pretty visual. Since, I can't draw it to show it to him I can only show him pictures that sorta kinda look like what I'm talking about and that means I've showed him hundreds of pictures. Each one followed by something along the lines of 'See? Now look at that window. That is exactly the type of window I want.' or 'See that shade of paint/curve of cupboard/doohickey on the edge of the stove?'
In the meantime, the one thing I DO love about my current kitchen is that its wonky countertop is practically impervious to scratches, cuts, and knicks. This means I can cut things directly on it with no worries. However, I only use this quality for pastry and noodle-y things because it's too hard to confine these things to a cutting board.
Take today for example. This dough had to be rolled out in sections because there was so much of it and then cut into approximately 1 inch pieces. I would have gone crazy if I had been trying to keep the long ropes of dough on my cutting board.
I guess there aren't any long ropes in this particular picture. Oops.
The technique of using a fork to roll the gnocchi off your hand thus creating the grooves is harder than it looks. It took me several batches to perfect it and not smoosh too much. It only took slighty more attempts to get the fork balanced while i took the picture with the other hand. There is a little too much smooshing at the tip end of the tines but hey, I had to stop the fork from falling off before I took the picture. =P
Only non-Italian people like Martha Stewart would worry about something like keeping them all a uniform shape and size.
Tristyn and Maia call these 'Snowball Spaghetti' because they couldn't always pronouce 'gnocchi.' Either way.....yum!
