marathon.

A few weeks ago was the Chicago Marathon.

Dave ran.

I watched.

Shocking, I know.  Even thinking about getting up early to go watch people run for 4 hours was not exciting to me in anyway.  But I figured if my husband is going to go run 26.3 miles, the least I can do is get my butt out of bed. To my surprise, watching a marathon is so fun.  There were over a million people out roaming the streets of Chicago cheering and going crazy, most of the time people they didn't even know.  It was fun to see what people wore to run.  My favorites were a mini mouse and a guy whole juggled 3 balls the entire way.  

Dave ran with Team World Vision through our church.  In total, his team from our church alone raised 91,000 and 1800+ kids now have clean water for life.  So amazing.

The weekend of the race we literally ate carbs the entire weekend.  I decided to add to the carb madness by making Dave a little pre-game meal.  Homemade gnocchi:

I took a cooking class from Whole Foods a while back now and this is what we made.  This was my first attempt on my own and it actually didn't turn out too shabby.  Here is the recipe:

Gnocchi Di Farina

Chef: Francesca Giarraffa

Serves 6

2 cups water

2 cups of all purpose flour

2 tbs olive oil

1 tsp salt

The yolk of one egg

Fill a good sized pot with 2 cups water, place it on the stove and bring it to a boil.  Add in the salt and olive oil.  Pour in the flour and egg yolk.  Let this cook while you continually stir the mixture until all the water is absorbed.  

Dust some flour over your work area and pour the dough mixture onto the space.  Make the dough into a ball and allow it to cool for 15 minutes.  Now cut some of the dough and begin to roll it in your hands to form smaller balls (about 3" in diameter).  Begin to roll it into a snake like piece so it's about 1" round.  Use your knife to cut the rolled dough into 1" pieces.  

Bring a large pot of water to a boil.  Add plenty of salt - this is the time to season your gnocchi.  Place about 15 gnocchi into the pot at a time.  When they begin to float, leave them in for about a minute longer and then scoop them out with a slated spoon.  

You can plate them immediately after you boil them and serve them with your favorite sauce.  If you want to save them, you can put them in a Tupperware for later in the day and lightly saute them in butter to reheat them.  You can also freeze them.  They freeze best if you freeze them individually and then combine them together into a freezer Ziploc baggie.