Kaese Spaetzle

So if you've ever been to Germany you may have tried the German version of Macaroni and Cheese. It's called Kaese Spaetzle. Kaese = cheese, not sure what Spaetzle means but maybe it means noodle? Anyhow, it's awesome. Really, it's one of those things I like to eat a LOT of when I am in Germany. You can buy real Spaetzle noodles here in the store but one box is like $5. Really expensive for mac and cheese I think! Anyhow, I found a recipe for it online. it was really simple process with few ingredients. Flour, eggs, water, milk, nutmeg, salt. Basically you make the batter and then you put the dough through your spaetzle maker and out come these tiny little noodle/dumpling things. Then you boil them and add them to sauteed onion with Swiss Cheese. Voila! Kaese Spaetzle Obviously, I don't have a spaetzle maker! But the recipe said you could make the spaetzle by pushing the dough through a slotted spoon, cheese grater or collander. There my adventure began... First note a picture of a REAL spaetzle maker. Do you think they sell these at Bed, Bath and Beyond? I may need to get one for these now...

Then while I made my dough, I boiled the water for the spaetzle! I got out my "Spaetzle"maker. AKA Collender as suggested in the recipe...

And here is my dough... so far pretty straighforward right?

My chopped onion

SO! now that I have all that stuff, I think I'll just push the dough through my "spaetzle maker" aka collender/cheese grater. HUGE mistake. BIG mistake. Gooey dough does not go through stainless steel into boiling water without sticking to me and the collander!! Even with a lot of flour I could not get it to work. So I ended up rolling the dough into long rolls and cutting them into chunks with my pizza cutter. My spaetzle was now German Gnocchi (an Italian dumpling!). Anyhow, I threw the dumplings into the boiling water. After they were cooked I then put them into the pan with the sauteed onion and added the Swiss cheese.

Yeah, SO not Kaese Spaetzle!! *by the way they look a bit brown b/c I used whole wheat flour*. Oh well I tried. Maybe I should break down and get a Spaetzle maker...