Garlic Soup and Gnocchi

Food thoughts for the day:

Even thought we get really hung up on stews and soups during the winter, we
do have many points of hunger for not-necessarily-for-winter foods. Case in
point: I subscribe to several food magazines and also watch FoodTV when I
get a chance ,so new recipe ideas are always coming up and then I get hungry
to try them. I saw Michael Chiarello do angel hair pasta with chicken in a
broth, rather noodle soupish in an Italian kind of way. He also made gnocchi
in the same episode, which I haven't made in a few years, but love to make
and eat! Bobby Flay made grilled pizza that looked great with fontina and
sausages. Who's thinking Italian? So, I made the noodle dish for dinner and
had it with a spinach salad with olives, feta, sliced eggs and a balsamic
vinaigrette. Tonight, it will be the gnocchi.

My neighbor is a wonderful cook and we share dinners quite often. The other night she invited us for baked ham, scalloped potatoes and a ceasar salad. I had already started garlic soup so we brought that along and had the soup and salad as a first course and the ham and potatoes for the main course. She always has wonderful
desserts, so the entire meal was very good. The soup recipe is on our website. Recipes link. If you
like onion soup, you are sure to like this just as much.

Other menus are in the works. My neighbor, mentioned above, and I have
been talking about doing a big tamale dinner, a great dish to do when there is
a crowd (you can use the help) and for some reason, it feels like a winter
dish. We'll let you know how that goes.

I am also planning a wine tasting with red wines from Chili and Argentina and
a Tapas Menu.

And we still need to make pizza (although mine will be with pepperoni and roasted peppers and onion) AND I have leftover chicken to deal with.

Thankfully, we never tire of new recipe discovery and eating well!

Until next time, live, love, laugh and eat well.