These Are a Few of My Favorite Things

Sweet potatoes and peanut butter, of course!  What did you think I meant– girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes?

For dinner tonight, we created a stew loosely based on the African Sweet Potato and Peanut Stew from Colleen Patrick-Goudreau’s cookbook, The Vegan Table.  We ended up adding and changing a lot from her original recipe, so I’ll share ours with you here.

Peanutty Sweet Potato, Butternut Squash, and Eggplant Stew

Ingredients:

1 tbsp. olive oil

1 onion, chopped

2 cloves garlic, chopped

2 tbsp. ginger, minced

1 red bell pepper, chopped

1 tbsp. brown sugar

2 tsp. cumin

1 tsp. cinnamon

1/2 tsp. nutmeg

1 sweet potato, peeled and chopped

1 eggplant, chopped

1/4 butternut squash, peeled, de-seeded, and chopped

1 15 oz. can red (kidney) beans, drained and rinsed

1 15 oz. can diced tomatoes

4 cups vegetable broth

1/4 cup peanut butter

salt and pepper to taste

1/4 cup roasted peanuts, chopped

cilantro, chopped

Directions:

In a soup pot, heat olive oil.  Add onion and garlic and cook for 5 minutes, until they start to soften and turn translucent.  Add ginger, bell pepper, and brown sugar, and cook for another five minutes.  Add spices, sweet potato, eggplant, and butternut squash and cook for another 6-8 minutes.  Add kidney beans, tomatoes, peanut butter, and broth.  Stir with a wooden spoon, scraping up the bottom of the pot to deglaze.  Bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer.  Cook over medium heat for at least 30 minutes, until the vegetables have softened.  

As with many soups and stews, the longer you let it simmer, the better it’ll taste!

Season with salt and pepper to taste. 

Serve over couscous, garnished with peanuts and cilantro.

It was good! My dad even said, “You know, this was actually good.” 

High compliments from him, trust me 🙂

Pictures:

Obviously, I hated it:

My dad is playing Christmas carols for us now on his guitar, but I think we’re about to move back into the dining room for a card game.  I did pretty badly when we played Hearts over Thanksgiving– I need to reclaim my pride!

Hope you’ve had a great day.  We had a fun afternoon– we went to Steinmart because I wanted to look at a pair of jeans.  I didn’t like the jeans, but they had an “Angel Tree” up for kids that needed Christmas presents, and we ended up picking out a 12 year old girl’s angel and buying her requests: lip gloss, a purse, and jewelry… 🙂  

Have a great night!  See you tomorrow!  We’re going to a lunch for my grandmother– she’s turning 85! Her actual birthday is actually on Christmas Eve, but my mom and aunts are throwing her a party tomorrow as an early celebration.  I’ll be posting some pics!