Gnocchi Soup

I’ve decided to try some new soup recipes as I teach myself to convert recipes to small batches.  As I’ve written before, I love soup … once.  I don’t want leftovers and I don’t want to fill the freezer with little containers that never get used!  I’m looking for a nice Saturday supper and a weekday lunch that I can take to my office and heat in the microwave. Nothing more.

I’m happy to use my 1.5 quart crockpot to make Saturday soups.  It is the perfect size and forces me to make a little batch.  I almost always have small portions of cooked chicken in my freezer.  Those are little packages that I tolerate! 

Gnocchi Soup

To make this soup, add the following ingredients together in the crock pot and cook on high for 2 hours:

4 cups of chicken broth

1 cup of these vegetables all combined – chopped onion, celery, red pepper, broccoli and carrot

½ cup chopped cooked chicken

¼ teaspoon of dried thyme

A dash of dry mustard, a dash of pepper and a dash of salt

After this has cooked for 2 hours, add about 4 ounces of miniature potato gnocchi and cook on low for another 30 minutes.  The gnocchi is precooked, so you are really just heating it through. It will thicken the soup a little.

Stir in a Tablespoon of butter and serve.

 

Soup has always been a part of fall and winter weekend life for me.  My mother always had a pot of vegetable soup and sometimes a second pot of chili ready for lunch on Saturdays.  This was after the family had a big early breakfast and left the house for any of a variety of projects.  My brothers and my dad knew that a big warm bowl was waiting for them at lunchtime.  Dinner, or supper as we called it, was usually on the lighter side, but always included a delicious piece of pie or cake.  Mother baked on Saturdays for her big Sunday dinner.  We always had something to sample on Saturday evening.

I carried on this tradition when I was making my own household.  Soups or chili seemed to be the foundation for college football weekends, local festival parades and antique shopping jaunts.  We always returned home to that warm bowl!

Today, one of my brothers can duplicate our mother’s vegetable soup.  He cans his own tomatoes and for years has raised a nice vegetable garden.  My chili is as good as Mama’s, but it is really made from my husband’s recipe! What remains the same is that whenever we make either, they warm our souls as we sit together around the table.