There are very few foods on dr bob's pretty short not-for-me list and even then he will not refuse those items when confronted with them. Well, maybe grapefruit. And liver has to be disguised in some way, like when we had it in a restaurant in Rome before we learned the Italian word for liver. bob is always begging his nieces and nephews to step up to the plate and have the courage to try just one bite of something they have never tried before but nearly always refuse to cooperate (except for that once when Araxi gave in to tiramisu at Bertucci's after persistent pestering by her uncle), so he has to walk the walk if he talks the talk. dr bob tries new dishes even when they look suspicious. In fact we love experiencing new foods, one of the ties that bind in the drbob-ms_ani partnership.
Sweet potatoes used to be on the list, although not near the top. bob could eat them when offered, but somehow the frequent association with brown sugar and additional sweetness struck a sour note in his mental filing cabinet. This year we discovered that sweet potatoes are no longer on the list, thanks to a few serendipitous tasty encounters with these tubers. So finally the time came to try the Carlino sweet potato gnocchi that had been staring him down through the glass doors of the refrigerated pasta cases for years.
We pulled out a jar of already prepared arugula marina sauce we'd impulse bought at Whole Foods for emergencies (quick suppers) and sautéed up some already cut white mushrooms, combined them together and tossed in the cooked gnocchi and we were ready to go. This was quick and delicious, even nutritious. What more can you ask for on a week night?