a peek inside the fishbowl

I think it’s nonsense that we, as North Americans, believe that there has to be a starch served at every meal. We’ve been conditioned, brainwashed, indoctrinated by Uncle Ben’s and the Potato Growers Associations!

If you have steak for dinner, why not just have steak and a huge salad? Instead of throwing some form of potato in there (mashed, baked, french fried) all the time? It’s better for you, and you’ll eat more greens.

BUT. Carbs are cheap. And I think kids need them, as does Mark who bikes 10km to and from work every day. (I sure don’t!) Gnocchi is one of my favourites. You can find them in the pasta aisle.

Here they are, looking rather rather unglamourous in my frying pan:

We used to call them MOUSE PILLOWS when the girls were small. We still call them mouse pillows. :)

A package of gnocchi will only set you back a couple bucks and it makes a good side dish for our family of four. But the best thing? It keeps forever in the pantry and only takes a few minutes to prepare. Woot!

This is my new gnocchi-cookin’ technique (which I only recently perfected):

1) Add a good dollop of butter to a large pre-heated frying pan.

2) Add gnocchi and toss to coat.

3) Put the lid on the pan and take care of the rest of dinner prep while they cook. They need about 5 minutes in there, stirring once or twice.

4) Take the lid off, add a tablespoon of brown sugar (FOR REALS), a squirt of fresh lemon juice, some thyme or sage, and salt and pepper to taste. Cook for another two minutes.

SEE. And there you have it! A very easy to prepare side dish that helps fill some bellies, and gives everyone respite from the other starches that are on normal rotation.

I served them with pan-fried pork cutlets and homemade apple sauce last night. The plate was quite brown-coloured (we definitely needed more green in there) but we ate it all up. It was sooo good.

p.s Ever tried to make your own gnocchi? Here’s a recipe for purple (!) gnocchi over on Recipes.ca that looks pretty cool.

I like to call this one: Fresh Air in Snoots.

We are having a lovely and quiet Thanksgiving today. YESTERDAY, however, was a hectic and desperate mess of couch* shopping. We went to:

• Sofa World (which was quite promising actually – do check it out if you are looking)
• Suede Interiors
• Blueprint
• Polanco
• Luxe
• The Modern Shop
• Elevenfiftyfour
• Mikaza (both locations, egads)
• Alteriors
• Not to mention a few antique stores along Bank Street South
• … and the Life of Pie
• … as well as a quick visit to Ten Thousand Villages for coffee and a much-needed Camino chocolate bar (or two).

We’ve recently scoped out Structube, Sears, Urban Barn, EQ3, Mobilia, Ikea AND we brought our children along for the ride to most of these places too.

I am EXHAUSTED, but what made this all a little easier was the fact that the lovely Nicole from Solace Interiors had given us three scaled room layouts to work with, along with measurements and a whole bunch of incredibly helpful advice. We had her info in our hot little hands while we looked, which meant that we were able to eliminate all kinds of things at the get go.

I am happy to report that we’re close to making a decision. We scoped out an amazing Canadian-made sectional at Alteriors. I was really happy with my experience there. The good news: The service was great, the price was only marginally over what we had wanted to pay (gah) but the service was The Best and we have the option to customize our couch to make it our own. The bad news: we will have to wait 10-12 weeks before delivery. The lesson here is that we should have started looking AGES ago.

I’m going back next week to look at it again.

Anyway, yes. Yesterday was a challenging day. But partway along our route we stumbled into that treasure trove known at The Ottawa Antique Market, where I found THIS BEAUTY. It’s in great shape, and it WORKS (!).

I caught this video of the girls using it for the first time. It cracks me up every time I watch it. (“You put your FINGERS in THERE…”)

Cute eh?

Now all I need is a retro telephone table to go with it. Hmm. Anyone know where I can find one of those? :)

* Do you call it a couch or a sofa??