New Year, new Recipes!

January is full new beginnings, one of them being, this blog! I welcome you to The Healthy Half Herbivore, where I plan to share with you my healthy inspired recipes which are [mostly] vegetarian. Although I am not 100% vegetarian, I try to eat plant based dishes most of the time. Once you start seeing how great you feel and how awesome fresh vegetables taste, you don’t even want to eat meat. I am a big fan of eating locally and visit farmer’s markets year round for the best, and tastiest produce. I have also started canning, which is a fantastic way to preserve the abundance of local produce. Vanilla bean peaches with ice cream anyone?

Today, I will start with one of my favourite winter soups that will fool even the biggest skeptics into eating tofu. The tofu adds extra protein, but more importantly, it makes the soup rich and creamy without the fat. I hope you enjoy!

African Yam and Peanut Soup

2 yellow onions, diced
2-3 cloves garlic, minced
1.5 inch piece of ginger, minced
2 large sweet potatoes or yams, peeled and diced into bite size pieces
3 carrots, peeled and diced
2 red peppers, diced
1.5 tbs cumin
1.5 tbs coriander
4-5 cups vegetable or chicken stock
1 can of diced tomatoes, low sodium
1 package of silken tofu- OR- 1 can of low fat coconut milk
1/2 cup almond butter or natural crunchy peanut butter
1-2 limes, juiced
cilantro and peanuts to garnish

In your soup pot, sauté onions, garlic, ginger a bit of olive oil, or coconut oil for a couple minutes. Add yams and carrots and sauté for another 5 minutes. Add red pepper, cumin and coriander and sauté for 3 more minutes. Add stock and diced tomatoes and scrape the bottom of the pot to release the sticky bits. Bring to a boil and then simmer and cover for 20-30 min until everything is soft. Stir in the nut butter of your choice. I prefer a crunchy nut butter for the texture. Remove from heat.

In a blender, add 2-3 cups of the soup along with the silken tofu. Roughly blend it together and pour back into the pot and stir. At this point you can take more of the soup to blend or leave as is. I like it thick and stew like, with bit of the vegetables still in tact. Add the juice of 1 or 2 limes.

Serve as soup or over brown rice or quinoa for a heartier meal. Garnish with peanuts and a few sprigs of cilantro. Shhh, don’t tell anyone there’s tofu in it, they’ll never know!