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This recipe is for anyone with a winter cold, the late fall sniffles, or even an enchanting touch of early holiday flu.  When you can’t smell anything, and your throat hurts, canned chicken soup actually tastes pretty good.  Problem is, most of it has wheat flour.  Not to worry.

Like virtually anything else that is gluten-free, you can make your own, with a lot less effort than you might think.

Ingredients:

4 cups of chicken broth–Pacific is gluten-free.  You can buy it in bulk on amazon.

1/2 cup Schar gluten-free anellini  (This is little circle pasta.  It’s not cheap by itself, but it takes so little out of the package, that you could make this recipe five times with one box.)

small sprinkle of dried garlic, about 1/4 tsp

1 1/2 tsp dried parsley

1 spring onion or 2 stalks celery or both

1 or two carrots

1 can of cooked chicken, for that fresh-from-a-can-way-too-salty taste  (Check that it doesn’t have modified food starch and is truly gluten-free.  I used a can of Sam’s Club chicken.)

3 tablespoons of vegetable oil

salt, to taste

Kitchen apparati:

medium sauce pan

knife  (I used a blunt steak knife.  I don’t think I’d even know how to handle a sharp knife.)

stove

spoon for stirring the pot

kitchen timer

Directions

Pour the broth into the pan.  Turn the heat to medium high.  (It’s about “8” on most U.S. stoves.)  Chop the vegetables right into the pan.  When the water boils, add the anellini and stir, constantly for about a minute.  Turn the heat down one mark to just above medium.  Set the kitchen timer to twenty minutes.  Add the spices.  Stir the soup occasionally, making sure it doesn’t burn.  The anellini will take at least fifteen minutes to cook, because the salt in the broth slows down the cooking time substantially.  (The extra cooking time and the anellini will make the broth thicken all by itself.)  When the kitchen timer says you have four minutes left, open the can of chicken, drain it, and then add it to the broth to warm.  Finally, in the last two minutes, add three tablespoons of vegetable oil, and stir.  Take the soup from the stove and salt it a little more before serving.

Cost:  $1.25 a serving

Soundtrack:  “Thistle and Shamrock” on NPR.org.  You can replay the last three shows to go with your melancholy winter mood.