My Monday and Tuesday cravings, plus a made up recipe for beet/potato gnocchi

Cravings: The Bachelorette, cookies, girls fixing cars, dinner w/the parents, chicken schnitzel!

Last Monday, I went over to the Rabes (they are now the Rabes, not just Jaren, since Roger is home!). I brought Roger "my" famous cookies, from here on out titled "oh my g-d" cookies, except for this time I cooked the butter for about 10 minutes on medium to make brown butter before using them. All else was the same. Charlie said he could taste the difference but I couldn't really. I think if anything they were a bit better. In case you are new, the cookie recipe can be found here. It was great to finally MEET Roger even though it definitely felt like I knew him already.

After hanging out w/the Rabes for not too long (I don't want to infringe of their family time!), I headed over to Jessi's house to watch the Bachelorette premiere with some girlfriends. My guess is Arie. He's CUTE! I guessed JP for Ashley's season the very first episode and Charlie took my bet thinking the odds were in his favor. I've told Charlie I'd leave him for JP, hahaha! Too bad Ashley got him, but in reality, I would NEVER ever ever dream of leaving Charlie. Ever!

Jessi has to take care of something with Joe's car, since he is deployed still he couldn't do it. Check out how handy she was!

EVERY TIME I jump a car I get nervous it will explode. Every time. SO scary. Luckily, it did not explode, as it never does :-)

Check her out playing man of the house while he's away.

Then we watched the show and she made awesome guacamole which I forgot to snap a pic of so I took a picture of the red pepper I ate.

Recipe: Cut up a red pepper. Serve. Yum.

On Tuesday night my parents came over and we had dinner. Charlie is working nights, my absolute least favorite shift. I see so little of him. I made him breakfast for dinner but then he had dinner too. Mom took some pictures of me cooking:


I then remembered I was wearing the apron Rochelle got me at the engagement party (I took a pic) so we also laid out the matching place mats:

Posing in my apron for Rochelle




I had thin chicken breasts so I decided to make schnitzel just the way my grandma taught me. I didn't have regular breadcrumbs but I had panko breadcrumbs so I changed it out that way. Then I remembered I had a turkish shwarma seasoning mix from Israel that I had bought so I mixed that into the flour and the breadcrumbs. I shouldn't have salted the chicken because I forgot I had put the seasoning into the flour and breadcrumbs and it was a TINY bit too salty. Enough to get me eliminated on top chef. Not enough that my family disliked it. There were zero pieces left!




On the menu with the schnitzel:

-Costco's chicken tortilla soup (this is AMAZING and freezes/defrosts well). It's also great to slice avocado into.
-Green lentils cooked with some of the shmarwa seasoning
-spinach, avocado, tomato, red pepper salad with a citrus yogurt dressing
-roasted broccoli and brussel sprouts.

Oh, and Charlie had oats as well :-) Since it was breakfast for him!

After clearing the table and doing some dishes, I decided I needed to use some potatoes that were sitting around, so I made a potato/beet gnocchi.

I made up the recipe:

Ingredients:
-2 potatoes (I weighed it and they were about 14 ounces)
-7 ounces of fresh steemed/peeled beets (you can buy these at costco or trader jos ready to go!)
-one egg (I wrote this down in the recipe I made up and forgot to use it!)
-1 ounce grated parmesan cheese
-1 heaping tablespoon of plain nonfat greek yogurt (regular yogurt or cream cheese or sour cream would work as well)
-2 cups of whole wheat flour (plus more for rolling/cutting)

Directions:
-Microwave the potatoes in saran wrap for 6 minutes. Let them cool and then peel them. Put them in a food processor with the beets, and puree for about a minute.

-Add the egg, yogurt, and cheese, and puree until all mixed together.

-Add 1.5 cups of flour and process.

-Sprinkle a bit of flour in a mixing bowl and dump out the ball of "dough" into it. Add the second cup of flour one tablespoon at a time and knead with your hands - it will be VERY sticky. I repeat - VERY sticky. Keep going until the dough feel sright, mushy and sticky, but not so sticky that the whole glob is stuck to your hand.
-Cut the dough into 4 pieces and roll into balls. With each each ball, slice about 4-5 pieces, and roll them into logs. Use a LOT of flower while you are rolling them out. I used my hands, not a rolling stick. Roll every log from every ball.
-Once everything is rolled out, give it one more sprinkle of flour, pat it all in, and using a very sharp knife (or pizza roller or scraper), cut the gnocchi into inch long pieces. You may have to sprinkle more flour as you do this.
-Once you are all finished, you may need to do one more sprinkling of flour over all of them before you seal them in a zip lock bag:


You can also press a fork into them to give them that scrunchy look, but I was too tired.

When you feel like eating them, boil a pot of salted water, and boil them until they float to the top. Enjoy!