I'm not sure who wrote the directions on the box, but I was instructed to use 5 quarts of water for about 30 little potato dumplings. If you don't know the conversion there, 1 quart is 4 cups, so I would need 20 cups of water. This just seemed insane to me and I only went with 3 quarts - it may have also had something to do with me not having a pot big enough to hold 5 quarts of water, let alone bring it to a rolling boil. Secondly, the box included a quick little recipe for a tomato-based sauce, that required a 28oz can of crushed tomatoes. Again, if you're keeping count, that's 3.5 cups of tomatoes. I kept rereading the box, but that is exactly what it asked for. So, I dropped the gnocchi in the boiling water and got started on the sauce.
The sauce was pretty simple, a little garlic in some olive oil, add in the crushed tomatoes, some oregano, and black pepper. Simple enough, but at that point the entire sauce pan was full and I still had 30 gnocchi to mix in. Once the gnocchi started to float, and as the instructions directed, I pulled the little potato pockets from the giant vat of water and mixed them with about half of the sauce. I also used one of the Kroger brand vegetable steam bags in the microwave, and was ready to serve up a most delicious dinner!
Well, that was the plan, anyway. I was left with too much water, too much sauce (which then, it turns out, was over-seasoned and too spicy), under-cooked gnocchi...and all after following the direction as close as I could. I figure the directions were originally for a larger box of gnocchi and there's someone out there making a batch for 500 soldiers, but our cooking instructions were switched.
Definitely not one of the better meals on this list, but better than that time I made BBQ tuna spaghetti back in college! (BBQ sauce, can of tuna, and a package of top ramen - those were the days!)
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