Fruit Leathers, Gnocchi and a 6 Course Dinner

For my birthday this year Ben suprised me with a new dehydrator, the excaliber... very fancy stuff. So A and I have been experimenting making snacks for ourselves. I refuse to spend 59cents for six square inches of fruit leather pre packaged, even when it sounds really good, I just can't do it. So I am making my own. We have made a pear on (thanks to kara), carrot apple, banana and strawberry apple banana. They are very tasty and I look forward to making more. Oh and they are sofa king easy to make. Blend fruit, spread it, put it on saran, dry, check it, dry more, make sure its done, roll up on the saran. You do have to clean the blender, but not the dehydrator tray, very nice.

We also got a suprise this week in the form of a 6 course catering job for a lot of money. Do we have space to do this? Of course not, is it crazy to cook a 6 course meal without a kitchen when you have tons of other work? Yes, but this is us and really we wouldn't be us if we didn't take on too much at once and have incredibly stressful periods followed by calm. So we made squash gnocchi in our dinning room as a family. Ben cooked on site, I helped serve and we made up for the lost foodnanny week this month.

6 courses is lots of fun, ben made halibut gravlocs served with shitake mushrooms and micro greens, heirloom pumkin soup with something fancy, seared lamb tenderloin over the gnocchi with leeks and other fancy sauces, salad with roast beets, a cheese plate and some killer pear tarts. Things went off with only one hitch, the dude who had the party described his kithchen as "professional" great we thought as that is what we are working towards in our kitchen... it wasn't so much professional as it was- old and inefficient. (we ended up bring our camp stoves to get the job done!) He had an electric range- ick, the largest burner shot out sparks and the other took 45 minutes to boil water. The lighting was awful, I couldn't tell if I was getting the forks clean enough between courses. I could go on, but for fear of insulting those of you with an electric range (mom) I will stop and just say it really confirms that every penny we put into our kitchen is going to be worth it, which is a great things when your budget is running low and the timelime is extending.