it’s a hard gnocc life

September 26, 2023

A few weeks ago, my best friend shared this delicious ​looking pesto gnocchi on her Instagram story, and I was ​immediately wanting it. I asked her for the recipe, and she ​didn’t use one, but she sent me what she did.

Essentially, it was three/four cups of flour, three eggs, and ​a cup of water added in little by little for the pasta, and ​then basil, parmesan cheese, pine nuts, and olive oil for the ​pesto - heavy whipping cream if you want it creamy.

So, here’s me, thinking about how I’m making this blog and ​becoming a homemaker and how I don’t need to look up

an actual recipe for making gnocchi pasta. I got this. I watched the video that my friend sent me on Pinterest on how to make the ​pasta dough, so I’m good to go.

You can’t be good at everything on the first try. Maybe some things, but not everything. I did not remember this when making ​the gnocchi.

I started the dough at roughly 4:30 pm, Florence playing by my feet for part of the time. I have sticky dough all over my hands, ​and she’s starting to get fussy, and I have about an entire cup of flour still left to incorporate into this dough somehow. I get my ​hands cleaned off and pick her up and get to doing something else, get her occupied again, and add a random extra egg to the ​dough to see if that will help incorporate the rest of the flour. Florence is not enjoying being occupied, and now I’m crying.

Yes. I cried. Over gnocchi. I was telling myself that I was so stupid to think that I could do it, that I could do any of it - cooking, ​baking, homemaking. I might as well give up. My baby is crying because I tried to do this while she was awake and she can’t help ​me, the kitchen counters and floors are a disaster, I’m not going to have this dinner even close to ready by the time Jarom gets ​home. Why do I even try?

But I wiped away my tears, put the pasta on hold for another minute or two while Florence and I did something else, and then ​held her as I started to *try* to roll the gnocchi. At first my method was to pinch off small pieces of dough, roll them into little ​balls, flatten them, and then “roll” them into “gnocchis”. I was also doing this one-handed with Florence on my hip, because she ​was not having it anymore. This method was taking an actual eternity, so I started cutting off larger chunks of the dough, rolling ​them out, then cutting them into little strips and rolling those.

Now Jarom is home and can finally take Florence, so he gets her some dinner and then starts helping me make the gnocchis. Oh, ​and it’s 6:00 pm by this point, if not later. He tells me about how he actually made gnocchi one time with his dad, and it was ​basically a two-day affair. We laughed about it, but then I got serious and started telling him about how I broke down just before ​he got home.

“Why would I ever want to do this again?” I asked him. “Why would I purposely go through the effort of making all of this pasta ​when I can’t do it right?”

Of course, I already knew what he was going to say: “Learn from your mistakes.” “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” And ​he would be right.

While the gnocchi was kind of tough and chewy in terms of texture, with the creamy pesto I improvised, (since the Walmart in ​our area is eternally out of heavy whipping cream…?) it at least tasted delicious. We didn’t end up eating dinner until after we put ​Florence to bed, which was around 7:30 pm, but we did have leftovers. And the next day when we ate it for dinner, we gave some ​to Florence and she absolutely LOVED it. She must have known what an ordeal it was for me to make.

Rather than just tell you a whole story of how I made some mediocre gnocchi one time, I want to share with you some of the ​lessons that I learned from the experience.

• Start projects while your kids are napping, or have them help you.
  

Florence isn’t old enough to help me make gnocchi yet, so in hindsight, I should have either made the dough or shaped the ​gnocchi while she was sleeping.

• You can’t be good at everything right away.
  

I’m not sure if I actually learned this lesson, but I was reminded of it. If you care about enneagrams at all, I’m like a 50/50 split ​between a type 1 and a type 4, so I’m an individualist perfectionist, which is just a fabulous combination… It means I feel my feels ​a lot and deeply, and also want everything to be just right. Which can be very disheartening in the kitchen, because it’s not where ​I’ve spent most of my time in life. But I’m trying to learn to go with the flow more and just keep trying and practicing.

• It doesn’t have to look good to taste good.
  

The gnocchi didn’t look appetizing. They didn’t even feel appetizing in one’s mouth. But they tasted good. With starting this blog ​and a new Instagram, I’ve gotten a little caught up in my presentation and appearance. It’s hard not to have that element of ​comparison all the time. So even though my gnocchi didn’t look perfect, I slapped a preset on the photo of them and posted it ​anyway.

• Making things takes time.
  

Everything worthwhile takes time. And I hate that. And I don’t think it’s a lesson I’ve truly learned yet either. I struggle with ​giving up at the beginning of something because I can’t see the end result. I’m not great at trusting the process. But I’m getting ​better. Making homemade meals when you’re trying something new for the first time isn’t going to happen in a half hour. It’s ​going to take maybe three full hours. And that’s okay.

Hopefully this story resonated with some of you who are trying to make more from scratch in the kitchen. Pasta isn’t easy; it takes ​practice. So, learn from my mistakes and you’ll at least have a bit of an easier time than I did!