With all these posts about great restaurant dining, I think it is time I pointed out that I still love to cook, too.  Last weekend we had our grandsons staying over for two days, and Saturday we went to the local orchard/farm around the corner for a wagon ride and picking our own pumpkins.  I kept a couple of small ones for culinary purposes.

A few days later I decided to partner with Barbara (her dough handling skills are much better than mine) to make pumpkin gnocchi for the two of us for dinner.  Turning to one of the most beautiful and interesting of my cookbooks, Venetian Taste by Adam Tihany, I found a fascinating way to make them in his recipe:

I did the prep work and then let Barbara turn it into a dough of the right texture.  Then, through the magic of iPhone 6, I did a short video of Barbara cutting the dough as it exited the pastry bag into the simmering water:

In the meantime I picked some fresh sage leaves and cooked them until crisp in good olive oil, to provide a fragrant and tasty simple dressing.  Served with a green salad and a few savory treats — marinated artichokes, homemade dill pickles, spicy pickled chard ribs, etc., the meal was a great success.  The wine, Villa Creek’s 2013 white, Grenache Blanc/Roussane, was a very good pairing.