I Made Soup!

A year and a half ago I tasted the first soup I've ever liked. It was Olive Garden's Chicken & Gnocchi. I decided to try making it someday. I looked up recipes. Discovered I would need to buy all sorts of things I don't usually have around my house (spinach, celery, garlic, chicken stock). But I didn't. Not until this week.

On Tuesday there was a snowstorm in Denver. Actually, when I got off work at 5, there was only rain and the sun was still up. So I went to the Sprouts "Farmer's Market" grocery store across the street, spent a half hour, and found my car covered in snow. But I couldn't bring myself to purchase the high-priced chicken at Sprouts, so I would have to wait to make the soup, however good soup sounded during a blizzard.

After a breakfast-for-dinner during the snowfall, my dad who loves to drive decided to joyride through the snow. We had fun. And at the end of it he let me run in to King Soopers where I procured the needed chicken. So I would make the soup Wednesday while snowed-in.

To my dismay, when I came upstairs at about 11:30 on Wednesday morning, the sun was shining and the roads were melted. I was just about to cook chicken when my family asked if I wanted to go to Chick-fil-a with them for lunch. Scrap the idea of a 2 PM lunch, and head for Chick-fil-a!

I prepared the chicken, celery, spinach, garlic, and carrots Wednesday afternoon, but didn't put the soup together. I waited for that until Thursday afternoon. With almost all of the ingredients pre-sliced, the pouring and boiling and simmering only took about a half hour. It looked like this:



And then I served myself a bowl of soup beside some fresh blueberry muffins (Betty Crocker with modifications: in the old days, she had us put water in the mix instead of milk, and though the instructions say milk now, I still just put in water; it tastes better!). Pour out some grape juice and some water, light a candle, and Voila!




It was good. I had some more several hours later. My brother tried it. He thinks it needs more chicken. He is a chicken fiend.

The changes I made to the Chicken & Gnocchi recipe I found were: I left out the onion and the cornstarch. I used heavy cream instead of half and half. And because I don't know what I'm doing, I used several cloves of garlic instead of just one, but I like garlic, so I don't mind. The recipe doesn't specify how much salt should be added, and I didn't put enough in at first. Next time I will pre-cook the chicken less; I grilled chicken breasts, which can still work if I watch more closely. Also the celery needed to be cooked longer before I added the chicken and chicken stock. Someday I may also try making my own gnocchi.

I made soup!

To God be all glory.