I love this soup

My daughter got me hooked on this soup, we found it on the recipezaar.com site. I hope you like it too.

Olive Garden Style Chicken and Gnocchi Soup
"This is very close to the Olive Garden soup. There's another recipe on the web which was the basis of this recipe, however it has been changed it to use less cream. Still tastes good! I did end up using a little cornstarch to thicken. I guess you could sub heavy cream for the half and half to make it a little thicker without using cornstarch. The gnocchi is usually in the spaghetti section of the grocery store."
SERVES 8 -10
Ingredients
3-4 chicken breasts, cooked and diced
4 cups chicken stock
2 cups half-and-half
1 stalk celery, diced
1 garlic clove, chopped
1/2 carrot, shredded
1/2 onion, diced
1 cup fresh spinach, chopped (I used frozen spinach, b/c that is all I had-LJ)
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 teaspoon thyme
salt and pepper
16 ounces potato gnocchi
1 tablespoon cornstarch (optional) (I did not use cornstarch -LJ)
Directions
1. Saute the onion, celery, onion, garlic, carrot in oil over medium heat until onion is translucent.
2. Add chicken, chicken stock, half and half, salt and pepper, thyme. Heat to boiling, then add gnocchi. Gently boil for 4 minutes, then turn down to a simmer for 10 minutes.
3. Add spinach and cook for another 1-2 minutes until spinach is wilted.
4. (Heat to boiling and add cornstarch dissolved in 1-2 Tbsp water at this point if you want a thicker soup.).
5. Ladle into bowls and serve!
Recipe #348802 35 min 10 min prep .