If you are looking for ways to reduce your carbon footprint, one of the most significant things you can do besides give up your car, avoid air travel, and have fewer children is eat a plant-based diet. If you switch from the standard American diet to one completely plant based, you will cut your carbon emissions by .8 tons a year. But even if you eat meat once or twice a month you are still reducing you impact enormously.
I know it isn’t easy to make dietary changes, so start small. Go plant-based once a week and have a Meatless Monday. Once you get used to that, it will get easier to add another meatless day and so on and so on.
I’ve been vegan for over 20 years and finding recipes used to be really hard. These days there are so many cookbooks and websites it can be overwhelming to anyone trying to figure it all out. Now I am going to jump into the fray and start posting favorite recipes on Mondays. I don’t know if I will manage a recipe every Monday, but we’ll see how it goes.
This first recipe is one Bookman made yesterday. He made it up himself from scratch with food we had in the pantry. We ate it all before I thought about taking a photo so you will need to use your imagination. We ate our soup with cornmeal crusted baked potato wedges. The soup is thick enough that you could also have it over brown rice or noodles if you have leftovers and want to change it up a bit.
Ingredients
2 cups dry black beans (guessing this would be a large can, maybe a little more)
1 medium onion, chopped
1 bell pepper, chopped
4 carrots, chopped
1 TBS garlic powder
1 TBS oregano
1 TBS chili powder (cook’s choice on the type and heat)
cubed tofu, tempeh, or seitan (your preference)
Instructions
Soak the black beans in water for a couple of hours. Rinse and cook in a medium to large pot at a simmering boil for about an hour. Reserve the bean water after cooking is done.
Using about 1/2 cup of the bean water, in a medium to large pot, saute/simmer the onion, bell pepper and carrots.
When the veggies are soft, add the spices and cook for a few more minutes.
Add the black beans and the rest of the bean water to the vegetable pot and simmer about 30 minutes.
In a blender or food processor, lightly blend the beans and veggies—you don’t want it smooth and creamy but you do want it whirled around a little.
Return to the stove and add your tofu/tempeh/seitan. Simmer for about 10 minutes until everything is bubbly and hot.
Remove from heat and serve.
This looks delicious. My wife makes a very similar soup. It is meatless but she does not use Tofu. She uses tomatoes. Otherwise it really looks very much like what she makes. I need to eat more tofu.
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Tomatoes are good too Brian Joseph. We didn’t have any in the house and wanted to add a bit more protein so in went the tofu 🙂
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Haha, this made me laugh. The first thing I noticed about this soup is that it’s a vegetarian based one that does NOT have tomatoes. Unfortunately I’m intolerant of tomatoes and it can be hard to find tasty vegetable based soups that don’t have them. This one sounds good – will put it aside for next winter. I like the idea of adding tempeh.
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Oh I am not a huge fan of tomatoes in general and if they are in anything they have to be blended up so smooth I can’t identify them so most of the time we don;t put tomatoes in things. Having an intolerance though, that must make things hard sometimes. I love tempeh. I am slowing turning Bookman into a convert. 🙂
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That’s interesting Stefanie. Most people love tomatoes! I must say that when I found out I was intolerant I was sad. I’d never loved fresh tomato, but I loved tomatoes in casseroles, soups and pasta dishes. They are an easy way to add dense flavour I suppose. I had to learn a whole new way of cooking. Asian food is good. Not a lot of tomato there!
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It’s the texture more than anything I think. One of my favorite soups is cream of tomato but I can’t eat it if there is a hint of chunkiness to it. Tomatoes do appear in a lot of dishes and in the US they are always added to salad along with cucumbers (which I really can’t eat). I like Asian dishes as well, especially ones that add peanuts 🙂
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I love your blog post idea! My kids like smooth soups, not chunky ones. Have you tried pureeing this one with a blender, or would it be a bad idea?
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Thanks! This was the first time we made this particular soup. It was very a much a what’s in the kitchen kind of soup 🙂 That said, I am sure it would be just fine blended smooth. You would lose the individual flavors of the vegetables so you may or may not need to adjust the spices.
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I’ve not eaten meat for 25 years and thought I knew all the protein substitutes but tempeh and seitan I’ve never come across before. Probably only available in health food shops?
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Hmm, not sure about where you can find them in your area. I shop at a food co-op, not a big grocery store. You can actually very easily make your own seitan, we do it all the time and it is much cheaper than buying it. It is made from wheat gluten though so if you are avoiding gluten, it is not for you. Here is a basic recipe: https://www.vegetariantimes.com/recipes/homemade-seitan Depending on what you want to use it for, you can leave the onion and garlic out and season it after the fact. As for tempeh, that is fermented soy. It is in the refrigerator section, usually next to the tofu. It comes in a block and you can do all kinds of things with it. And because it is fermented you get some probiotic goodness with it.
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Interesting Karen. I know tempeh well – as Stefanie says we too find it here in the tofu section – but I hadn’t heard of seitan either.
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Give seitan a go sometime if you get the chance. It is a solid meat substitute that you can use in place of chicken in recipes. There are all sorts of uses for it and it is high really high in protein since it is made from wheat gluten. Of course, if you are sensitive to gluten you want to stay far away from it.
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I’m gluten insensitive!
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Hahahaha! Same here! 😀
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Sounds yummy!
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It was Joan! Bookman can do wonders with the “we’ve got to use up a few things before they go bad” technique 🙂
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I love this idea for your blog. I’m trying to start cooking (one of my serious goals for the New Year) and this soup is something I could do! Plus, my son likes tofu!
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Your son likes tofu? I think that’s awesome! Cooking is a great goal! I am well aware that it is more work, but I think the benefits are worth it. Good luck! If there are any veg recipes you are looking for, let me know 🙂
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