A soup entry with racoon stripes

Life has been insane lately. Reading week went by as quickly as a breath, but I am very proud to have eaten healthily most of the week, with minimal meat and maximum rationing of food. I have a recipe to share with you because of my latest dietary observations. I have been eating mostly home-made, from-scratch food for the past two months, which has actually caused me to fall out of favour with the food I used to love - like Wolfgang Puck’s Tomato and Basil soup, which I used to love so much I asked for a case of it for my birthday.



However, when I had it at work last week, I found it overwhelmingly salty. Same as I found Tim Horton’s Chili two months ago…which made me realize that my minimal intake of sodium has affected my tolerance for salt! Processed meats, canned food, even some frozen meals taste absolutely disgusting. As such, this week I made a vegan chickpea chowder - a classic, simple recipe all vegetarians would be familiar with. Minus the abundance of rosemary, it was successful, so I will provide the recipe and the pictures here.



Chickpea Chowder

1 can stewed chopped tomatoes
1 can chickpeas, 2/3 of the can pureed with 2 tbs vegetable oil
1 can tomato sauce or 1 cup V8/tomato juice
1 package frozen spinach
1 white chopped onion, sautéed with 1 garlic clove
1 cube vegetable stock
2 tbs black pepper
1 tbs salt (the salt in the canned ingredients will do the rest)
Optional - 2 tablespoons hot Tabasco sauce

1. Add stock cube to a soup pot, add 3 cups water, bring to a boil.
2. Puree 2/3 of the chickpeas in a food processor (or just mash them up)
3. Sautee onion and garlic with 1 tbs vegetable oil (or just throw in soup and boil 5 mins)
4. Add tomatoes and tomato sauce, chickpeas (all) pepper, salt and optional Tabasco sauce
5. Roughly chop the package of spinach into cubes and add to soup, boil for 5 mins.
6. Scoop and Enjoy!

Also, as a side note, I put racoon tails in my hair! And I don’t care what anyone says, but I am assured they represent me perfectly: