Hump Day Hygge! (More food)

Puerto Rico.  Las Vegas massacre.   Then, my darn knee is still hurting, making me limp around while I do my errands.  And suddenly I am trying to go gluten free.  I know the last two aren't any comparison to the first two, but all of it has made life seem very heavy lately.

So I seem to be retreating into cooking a lot, enjoying the cool early fall weather, and reading.

I made a delicious salmon chowder last night.  Wasn't difficult to make at all.  We eat canned salmon about once a week, but getting the wild caught frozen fillets or steaks is super expensive.  So salmon chowder is a good way to stretch one package of filleted salmon. 

Here's the recipe:  Salmon Chowder  I pretty much followed the recipe exactly.  I trimmed the skin off the salmon though.  It doesn't say whether you are supposed to or not, but I personally can't stand oily fishy tastes.  So I cut/scrapped off as much salmon as I could and then I fed the skin to my dog and cats, which they loved.

I also used the light coconut milk.  I think I've only cooked with coconut milk once before.  It was really delicious!  Made the chowder very delicate and tasty.  We did add more salt and pepper at the table, but once we did that the soup was just scrumptious.

I also made sweet potato fries to go as a side because usually we have bread or crackers with soup so I felt we needed something. 

I took this simple recipe from the Hashimoto's 4-Week Plan book again.  I think these recipes are nice and simple and well done.  I chopped up two big sweet potatoes into matchstick thin sticks.  This took awhile.  Then I melted 2 tablespoons or maybe a bit more of coconut oil in a pain, poured that over my sweet potato french fries then add some salt and 1/4 tsp of tumeric, per the recipe in the book.  I mixed and tossed those thoroughly, then put on a big cookie sheet and into a hot oven at 450 degrees.  Took about 30 minutes.  Some fries were crispy, some were not, but everybody enjoyed them a lot!

Half way through eating my soup last night, I realized I needed to take a picture.  The sweet potato fries on the little plate.

Another win was trying out Cream of Rice cereal.  I was looking for gluten free, non-GMO oats at the store.  I didn't find those but my eye lit on another hot cereal proudly endorsed by the Celiac.org group. 

It's very easy to make, a nice hot cereal you should eat while piping hot from the pot.  I garnished it with raisins, pumpkin seeds and a drizzle of maple syrup and it was quite satisfying.  Apparently, it has lots of iron in it?  70% of your daily recommended amount.  And since I'm feeding someone struggling with anemia, that's a very good thing!

I think this will make a regular appearance at our breakfast table this winter.