January 25th – Gnocchi Stew

by annemariedemyen, posted in Canadian Meal Options

Another chilly day in the north forty!  I have places to go and things to do today, but fortunately Dan is home today to take me where I need to go. 

Dan went shopping yesterday and picked up  gnocchi so we could make the stew I had originally planned for supper on Sunday.  Nothing like a pot of steamy, tasty, comfort food to get us through a frigid spell of Saskatchewan winter.

Browning the beef in seasoned flour…
Adding the vegetables Dan chopped – onions, garlic, red pepper, mushrooms, celery, carrots, and parsnip. Add beef broth and … Into the oven for an hour or so.
Add the gnocchi, more broth, and a can of Swiss Chalet beef gravy… Back into the oven.
Add frozen peas..and back into the oven!
Ready to serve with fresh baked, buttery, Pillsbury crusty buns!

While I was cooking the stew, I made a rediculously obvious discovery about the new stove we bought a few weeks ago.  🙄

I don’t know how frequently most people replace their stoves, but we had our last one for twenty years ago.  Like this one, it was a Whirlpool, glass top, electric, self cleaning stove.   Over the past twenty years, Whirlpool has made a few notable changes.  Our new stove has no power outlet in the top control panel (which was so handy on our last stove since our kitchen is seriously  lacking power outlets!). Our new stove has a convection fan – which I love – especially for some things like cooking thick cut bacon.  And our new stove has a BIG oven. It takes away room from the drawer at the bottom of the stove but it is BIG! And big is always better – right?  Except that ever since we have gotten our new stove, I have struggled to get things in and out of the oven.  Especially big heavy things like Dutch ovens full of stew.  What the hell?

Yes it needs cleaning – 🙄

The salesman was so excited about the big, roomy oven!  What he didn’t mention (no doubt because it was so obvious) is that the big oven came with a BIG oven door. A door that anyone  five foot nothing would have issues reaching across to put things into or take things out of the oven. Like really?  Who do they design these big ovens for?  Nobody in my family for sure.  When it comes to size, I am kind of the pick of the litter.  My sisters can only dream of being five foot nothing.   😧

I just called my salesman and told him that this issue might be something to mention to other height challenged home makers. I also suggested that people should be encouraged to use the floor mounting bracket that comes with these stoves, as the bigger oven door does tend to make the stove less stable than our older one. Our salesman definitely agreed that these suggestions were noteworthy and would be passing them along to his co-workers. 🙂

That is it for today. Take care and have a great day!

15 thoughts on “January 25th – Gnocchi Stew”

  2. Until now I had never heard of gnocchi and still do not know what it is. That stew looks so yummy. Good for you giving the salesman suggestions to mention when selling the stove. My stove is several years old and I can barely reach in the oven far enough to remove what I have baked. I hope to not have to buy another appliance. There are many things they never think of being difficult for us under 5 feet. That is one reason I so dislike shopping.

    Liked by 1 person

  4. The gnocchi stew looks delicious. I wish I had seen this before I went to the store–I would have added gnocchi to my list. I am anxious to try that! When we got our new range, I went with the double oven/no drawer. I never used the drawer. The two smaller ovens are wonderful, and the doors are smaller, so even though I am 5’7″, it is so much easier to put items in and take them out.

    Liked by 1 person

  5. Thank you, Frony! Gnocchi is a potato dumplings. It is potato wrapped in pasta. (It is in our pasta aisle). I think most appliances must be built by 6 ft men. The salesman did say they have some washing machines that are an issue for shorter women.

    Liked by 1 person

  6. Thank you! We enjoyed it. And I didn’t have to peal potatoes. 😊 I wasn’t too excited about the smaller drawer – our kitchen is lacking in space enough as it is, but at least I still have room in the smaller drawer for cookie trays. I will definitely pay more attention if I have to go buy any more new appliances. I’m glad you got a stove that works for you.

    Liked by 1 person

  9. You are welcome, Anne and thank you for the info on Gnocchi. I will have to see if it is available anywhere around here so I can try it. I have to get on my tip toes to remove clothes from my washer. They really need to consider shorter people when they build appliances and some other items.

    Liked by 1 person

  11. Thankfully the salesman warned my about the depth of my washing machine and had me practice reaching to the bottom. The only thing I didn’t factor in was that I was wearing shoes. When I do the wash barefoot I have to strain to reach that last sock.

    Liked by 1 person

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s