Sausage Gnocchi Soup & Our DIY Fire Pit

Tonight we decided to make a little bonfire in the backyard.  What was the reason?  Well, it was a little chilly, we had branches that needed to be burned, we had dinner to make and campfires are just FUN!  We made part of our sausage gnocchi soup with a grill laid over our DIY firepit. It was just several cinderblocks in a rectangular shape.  If you'll notice the open parts of the cinderblocks are turned sideways.  This is because it gets more airflow to our fire and it keeps us MUCH warmer when we're hovering around it.  

 I put soup on the menu for tonight because it would allow us to make something that used the leftovers from school lunches.  These excess items include carrots which the kids NEVER eat unless I work it into curry, soup or a salad...

and milk, which the kids only use with cereal or to dip cookies.

We also had sourdough bread and a baguette that our church leaders distributed to several congregation members from a Central Market donation yesterday.   I pulled it from the freezer so it looks a little frosty here. 

I thought it would make a nice side to our soup.

Let me tell you about our DIY fire-pit first, then I'll briefly tell you about the soup.

So our fire-pit is comprised of cinderblocks.  We had 14 to be exact, seven on the bottom and seven on top.  We like camping out in the backyard so we put this fire-pit together sometime around Christmas for a Christmas Eve camp-out.  If you'll notice, the openings of the cinder blocks are facing sideways instead of up and down.  We noticed that when we placed them with the opening facing out to the side, it gave more airflow to the fire which helped keep it roaring.  It also is nice because it lets more heat out around the fire for our legs and feet which get pretty chilly.  It works pretty well.

David also positioned the cinder-blocks in this rectangular shape so the grill would fit perfectly over the top. So, our DIY fire-pit also serves as an outdoor grill!  Folau is grilling the applesmoked chicken sausage on the frying pan here.  This sausage will be a the main flavor in our Sausage Gnocchi Soup.

Folau was our main chef for tonight.  Once he had the sausage completely cooked over the fire pit he removed it from the heat so we could put a huge pot on the grill to boil water.  This pot is what we used to cook our gnocchi.  I forgot to take a picture :/ Sorry.

Meanwhile, we cooked 1 cup of carrots, 1/3 cup onion, 3/4 cup celery, 3 diced potatoes, 1 can of corn and 2 cloves of minced garlic in 4 cups of chicken broth.

While that was cooking, Folau started the roux for our soup.  We started used 1 1/2 cups of margarine and melted it down to a fine liquid.  Next he added 1 1/2 cups of flour and mixed it until all the lumps were out.

We slowly added milk to this mixture, mixing out any lumps after each carton of milk. 

 Once all 8 cups were mixed in until the liquid was smooth, we let it continue cooking until heated through, being careful not to let it burn.

Then we add the chicken broth and vegetables to the creamy soup.

After that, we added the cut up and cooked sausage.

And turned it on low to keep warm.

Folau made the garlic bread. He buttered it, sprinkled it with garlic powder, paprika and parsley. 

Then he put it in the oven on BROIL for 1 1/2 to 2 minutes or just until browned.

Outside the pot was boiling over the fire-pit.  When you cook gnocchi it only needs to cook in boiling water for 1-2 minutes.

Once the gnocchi was done and added to the soup, we used spinach from our container garden outside to garnish the soup.

Then we enjoyed it around our fire pit.  The perfect soup for a chilly evening during quarantine.

We have never had gnocchi.  It was nice to try something new but the kids didn't care for the texture.  I think next time I make this, it will be the same recipe WITHOUT gnocchi so it would be more of a sausage chowder.