Interviews with Charlie: the fine art of cutting gnocchi

Wendy has all but dropped her last nap of the evening and sadly,  our ‘Charlie-and-Mama-time’ cooking dinner dates are coming to an end.  I thought I’d post about it, since Charlie and I whipped up his favorite meal, “Gnochi Soup”  the other night.   aside: the international foodie in me cannot even begin to describe my delight when the words ‘gnocchi soup’  are chanted over and over with as much excitement as if it were ice cream or pizza or spaghetti!)  Despite its somewhat unusual name, there is little for a toddler tongue to get hung up on in this comfortable soup.   So I thought I’d share our version of it and save a few memories for later at the same time.   (and also send a big ‘ol thanks to my mom for forwarding me the original recipe !)

What I love about this soup is you can follow the basic pattern with whatever meat and veggies you have in the house.  It turns out great even when I don’t have an onion, or wine or stock on hand and everyone loves to eat it.  Plus, making the gnocchi is a lot like playing with playdoh.  Perfect for toddler cooking! 

Gnocchi Soup

Ingredients:

1lb meat cut into bite-sized pieces (chicken or beef will do, I imagine bacon would also be delicious), 1 onion coarsely chopped, 2-3 cloves garlic peeled and smashed, 1 turnip peeled and chopped or 3 stalks celery chopped, 3-4 carrots chopped, a cup or two of dark leafy greens (spinach, kale, etc) chopped, 1 C wine, 4-6 C stock or water, thyme or other herbs to taste, salt and pepper to taste.  One recipe of gnocchi.

Directions:

Sauté meat with 1-2T olive oil in a large soup pot on high heat.   Stir it very infrequently so that it gets nice and brown.  When the meat is browned on most sides (still raw on the inside is fine) remove it from the pan with a slotted spoon and set aside. [to save time and keep your toddler entertained, chop up your veggies and tell a good superhero story or two while the meat browns.]

Into the hot  pot, add onion, carrots, turnip or celery, and garlic.  Let the veggies sauté on high heat for a few minutes until they get a little browned.  [Close supervision and  long handled spoons held with mittens or oven mitts allow even the most fool-hardy toddler to safely participate in this action.] 

Add 1 cup wine or water and scrape up the stuff on the bottom of the pan with it.  (I think the technical cooking term for this is deglazing…but Charlie didn’t know it until I told him—and he probably has put it straight out of his mind in favor of being able to remember “the really fast superhero guy who runs so fast you can’t see him and wears a red costume for banging down bad guys?  Yeah, I ‘member his name is Flash, Mama.  Yeah, because he is so fast.”) Any who.  So the soup.  and cooking with toddlers.  Yeah!  So after you are done deglazing the pot,

Add in 1 t thyme, 1t salt, leafy greens (unless you are using spinach-- add that right before blending) and another 4-6 cups of water or stock  (enough to float your veggies with lots of wiggle room). 

Bring to boil and simmer until the veggies are soft~15min.  [while this cooks, make up a recipe of quick gnocchi—(this is a toddler tested recipe, you can add the ingredients in any order, pick out egg shell quite easily and salvage their measuring errors with with a little extra water or flour at the end.  Just watch it on the baking power!)]  Blend all the veggies and stock together until no veggie part is discernable.  (Here is where the college tuition I paid for learning color theory in art class is paying me back.  It turns out that colors opposite each other on the color wheel, such as green and orange, make brown when they are mixed together.  This soup ends up tasting and looking like it is just meat and gnocchi in brown gravy, even though it has all those fabulous, nutritious veggies in it! )  I highly recommend using an immersion blender!  If you don’t have one, just use your blender and part of the broth (and share the angst of having to wash out all those blender parts with your close loved ones to convince them to get you an immersion blender as your next gift! )  I think it is my most often used and beloved appliance!   [Don’t forget to let your toddler push the button—making lots of noise while sister is sleeping is certainly a draw!]

Now, add the meat back into your broth and bring to a boil.  Simmer until meat is tender~15 min.  [while the meat simmers cut up your gnocchi]  Charlie thought he would demonstrate this step for you, though he seems to think you bake them…this is not the case: 

Five minutes before eating, plop that gnocchi into the broth.  When it rises to the top it is ready to eat.  Serve your soup with lots of super hero stories.   It turns out babies love gobbling down gnocchi soup, especially when it was made by their big brother! 

For the love of a good cardboard box…

Charlie and Wendy discovered both the joy of cardboard boxes and playing together as siblings this evening.  Charlie hid in the box and then would pop out suddenly.  This is the first time Wendy has been mobile enough to really participate.  She would crawl right up to the closed flaps, shrieking and waiting for him to come bursting out again.   The suspense was just killing her!   I can say without exaggeration that it was the most fun Wendy has ever had in her life.  She was so wound up that she didn’t even seem to notice the few times Charlie whacked her in the face with the box flaps coming out!  I picked her up a couple times just to calm her down and her heart was beating so hard that I could feel it banging against my hand. 

Wendy:  There he goes…he’s going in again!  Oh this is going to be good….!Wendy:  (shrieking laughter)

Charlie: “ROARRRRRRR!!!  

Wendy:  More?

…and this is how we wind them down for bed, folks…..

owning the cattle on a thousand hills….

I drove home from teaching piano lessons last Monday night with  a couple hundred dollars worth of frozen grass-fed beef in my trunk.  It took the form of about 20 lbs of ground hamburger, several different roast cuts and four sirloin steaks.  All in all it was about three grocery bags full and was a completely unexpected gift from the mother of my piano students. 

We’ve not really been eating much meat.  Lately I’ve been exploring what beans and tofu can do for our shrinking grocery budget.  Not to get all dismal and all, but Jonathan and I feel the weight of our needs pushing up against our limited resources on a regular basis.   I’m starting to see that money has been much more in my little heart than a economic currency.

So, when push comes to shove,  and I find myself wandering down the grocery isle, asking ridiculous questions like, what is more important to buy this week? Baby wipes or laundry detergent?  I feel a different pushing and shoving.  So much in me hangs on my money.  You either have  MONEY or you don’t.   With money, you are either SAFE or you are not; you are either IN CONTROL or not.  Yes, the lack of money is interfering with things I have up until now thought to be my rights--my safety(new tires), my comfort (heat/air conditioning), my relaxation(eating out, movies), my rest(babysitters), my health (physical therapy).  But even more telling, the lack of  these things in my life is also interfering with my ability to give, to be kind and patient, and to love.  And that my friends, is convicting!

I’m pretty sure there is not a place in the Bible where God says, “Love your neighbor as yourself when you feel safe, comfortable, well-rested and relaxed.  Otherwise, you just go ahead and feel free to cuss him out for the annoying inconvenience that he is, honey.”

I guess my point is this:  We are limited. Finite.  And God made us this way.  He knows.  He created us with an end to our strength, our patience, our optimism, our hope.  He created us to need him—to find our hope in his infinite strength, patience, and love.  He is asking us to trust his care for us.  Yet, he also commands us to trust and obey regardless of our circumstances.   But I am much more inclined to trust and obey my bank account—meaning I feel much safer and much more generous with my time and patience when my bank account high than when it is low. 

I think I have a case of misplaced trust. 

Although I’ve known this, I’ve not known this like I know it now.  And most days, I still don’t know it as I should.  But somehow not having enough, has forced me to to notice and admit--in a way I have never before--that I am not enough.

And then, just as my finite-ness begins to occlude my hope and my faith and my love, God (in his infinite kindness) fills my trunk with frozen meat.  And I start to remember (like my own little chapter 11 of Hebrews)—

Just as we wonder how we will seat two small children at our table for meals with only one highchair/booster, I see a beautiful wooden highchair out by the dumpster in the alley.  It barely fits in my trunk, but looks beautiful in our dining room.

Just as we are about to burnout, we are flown to Florida for a two-week vacation in the middle of January.

Just as we notice we can’t afford tuition this term, a friend e-mails us out of the blue and asks to help move us along in our seminary career.

And just as we have resigned ourselves to never eating a good steak again, God sends me home with a trunkful of grass-fed, organic beef. 

For every beast of the forest is mine, the cattle on a thousand hills. I know all the birds of the hills, and all that moves in the field is mine. If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world and its fullness are mine.

Psalm 50:10-12

Kind’a makes you want to giggle, doesn’t it?   That freezer full of meat is such a silly, bloody love note, isn’t it?

When you can't win for loosing…

So it all began when Charlie begged, with big blue adorable eyes,  to take a living room blanket to bed with him.  Then he wet his bed.  Then I washed that dark blue chenille blanket in a load of darks.  After which the entire load looked like a chenille blanket.  (Worst laundry fail to date.) I carried that disaster of a blanket through the living room to let it dry on the balcony. 

Then I laid Wendy down on the floor to change her dirty diaper.  While doing so, I looked up and realized the blanket had left a trail of fuzzballs across the carpet. Knowing that Wendy loves me some good fuzzball, I slapped a clean diaper on her and went to pick up the fuzz before she could eat it.  And in the excitement, I momentarily forgot she learned to crawl the day before yesterday.  I had just decided the case called for reinforcements and turned to get the vacuum out AGAIN, when I noticed her dumping the poop out of her poopy diaper, which I had left across the room.  Thank goodness I got to her just before she started chewing on it! 

Lessons learned?  Avoid precious, pleading blue eyes, NEVER wash chenille, throw diapers away immediately, and above all don't forget it when your baby learns to crawl!

She Crawls!

Wendy started crawling forwards yesterday.  (She’s been crawling backwards since Christmas.)   It is very cute.  Before every new attempt, she sits up, then leans over and slaps the floor with alternating hands a few times.   It looks for all the world like a miniature Suma wrestler trying to intimidate the floor. 

Charlie is not sure what to do with her mobility.   Neither is her Mama.   I have already vacuumed more times this week than I have in the last six months (and I am also accepting any advice on inter-sibling negotiation/parenting skills you have to offer!)