29th of the month: GNOCCHI NIGHT

Once upon a time (when I was living in Oregon), a woman asked me how do we celebrate San Patrick day in Italy. When I told her that we do not celebrate this festivity, she was surprised “oh, sorry, why not?”. “Well” I answered, “that is an Irish holiday and we are Italian”. I think she did not get that, because she continued to look disappointed about that (and she gave me the look "you Italians are so culturally insensitive!!!).

The moral of the story is: in this small rock in the middle of the ocean where we celebrate all Samoan, all American and all Christian holidays, why shouldn’t we also celebrate an Argentinean tradition?

Oscar told me that in Argentina it is tradition to eat gnocchi on the 29^th of each month. Probably because around that date the money from the stipend is running out and gnocchi is one of the cheapest foods to cook. So, why not, let’s celebrate gnocchi night here in American Samoa too! And some good italian cooking once in a while does not hurt anybody!

This Friday I exchanged the latin-dancing class with the gnocchi making class. Destiny that this year February actually has 29 days?!? I told people to come at 6:30 with their own peeler to start peeling the potatoes, but by the time must people came, the potatoes were already boiling in the water. This is the easy part. The hard part actually comes when you have to shape the mass (that is smashed potatoes and flour) into small dumplings. A real teamwork effort is you want to eat before midnight. Last time we had gnocchi we even had two different teams competing…

Luckily, Team America showed up at this critical moment to supervise the work. They comfortably sat around the working sipping their beers, making sure that everybody (else) was working.

Brian created the biggest gnocco ever seen in the entire history has American Samoa.

Jeremy volunteered at the stove, to cook the gnocchi in boiling water. Gnocchi naturally float when they are ready to be taken out from the pan. Sauces: Ragu’ sauce and butter, sage and walnuts sauce… HUMMMM!!

And there you go! At 9:00 we definitely had enough gnocchi to fed 17 people and some left over! (for the record, I counted 2 ½ medium-sized potato for each person).
Everybody loved gnocchi! But beware! They have the special power to expand in your belly, and soon you are much fuller than when you stopped eating!

And for all those people that stop smoking, this is the perfect moment to relax in the sofa’ on the porch and smoke a cigarette! You can’t stop smoking on a gnocchi day!
As everybody was cooling off on the porch, Team America was listening the Kazakhstan hymn over and over again…. What a good evening!

So, guys, thanks for coming, cooking, eating, cleaning and smoking!!!
GOOD TEAM-WORK!
and especially, let's be more culturally sensitive toward those Argentinians.... see you in a month for the same story!