Gnocchi, Wine and Cake

Since last week was the Half Marathon and we had company in town, we skipped a week of our Sunday dinners.  This Sunday was the Super Bowl so we did our yummy dinner on Monday instead.

This week's menu:

• Potato Gnocchi with Gorgonzola and Radicchio
• Marinated Zucchini Slices - ran out of time so didn't make...
• Marbled Lemon-Blueberry Butter Cake

It was a lot of work, but soooo good.  We enjoy preparing/cooking the meals together which makes it fun.

When we made the Gnocchi, we cooked the potatoes, peeled them and according to the recipe, were supposed to put them through a potato ricer.  What on earth is a potato ricer?  We looked it up online and tried to improvise with a cheese grater.  It worked well enough and when we were done I exclaimed... "Who needs a potato ricer??!!  Not THIS GIRL!!".   Bryce thought it was funny enough to put on FB apparently. :)

When I made my last cake, I had to cook water/sugar until it reached "soft ball" state of 238 degF.  I don't have a candy thermometer so I was attempting to use a meat thermometer (don't worry, it was thoroughly washed before use).  Bryce walked in told me that was stupid... he grabbed the iPad and bought me one off of Amazon.  Thank, Love!  (BTW... it's the same one that is sold at Williams-Sonoma, but we paid 1/2 the price on Amazon and got it in 2 days with Amazon Prime.  Nice!)

A few pictures from the meal:

Here is a picture of my blueberry preserves cooking for the filling with my new thermometer:

Preparing the Gnocchi

Enjoying our hard work!

The cake... and it was good.

This time, we put the leftover cake in the refrigerator.  :)