Potato, bean, and tomato soup

Easy and tasty! It helps to cut all the vegetables first...

Slice thinly

3 onions

and fry with spray oil over low heat until browned. Dice

4-5 ounces of mushrooms,
2-3 medium potatoes

and add to the onions, continue to fry. Once the mushrooms have reduced, cover with water, and

1 tablespoon nutritional yeast flakes,
1 teaspoon marmite.

Increase the heat, and simmer until the potatoes soften. Meanwhile, place

1 can chick peas (with their liquid),
1 can tomatoes,
1/2 teaspoon salt,
sage,
black pepper, and
1/4-1/2 teaspoon chili powder

in the blender, and puree until smooth. Once the potatoes are cooked, mash in the pot, add the puree and thinly shredded

swiss chard,

and simmer briefly, before serving with crackers.

Pomegranate stew

While my sister and I were in Los Angeles (conference for me, vacation for her), we happened upon the Iranian quarter of the city along Westwood Boulevard. Of course, any restaurant which has writing that I can't read is interesting... So, after a bit of arm-twisting on my part (my sister is not an adventurous eater, even though I'm the vegan) we stopped into Shaherzad Restaurant. Something like this Pomegranate Stew was on the menu, fit my criteria of being vegan and interesting, and I loved it! It was served in a large bowl with a large plate of steamed saffron basmati rice.

So upon arriving home, I did a little research and found a recipe. I reproduce my variant of it, which is a close approximant to the one I had at the restaurant...

Grind in a blender

1/2 pound raw walnuts in
4 cups of pomegranate juice
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground cardamon
1 teaspoon sugar.

Add the juice to the blender slowly! I started with about 1 cup, and then added a little at a time to keep the mixture moving.

Chop and fry

1 onion,

and then add some "meat." Or not; the stew I had at the restaurant had no meat in it. However for the version I made at home, I used

14 ounces of LightLife Gimme Lean Ground beef style

cut into 1 ounce chunks, which I fried with the onions. Add the contents of the blender to the fried onions, and bring to a boil. Simmer until the sauce thickens, and serve over rice. The recipe I referenced above calls for a fairly long cook time. Since there's no meat in my version, I was able to reduce the simmering to about 30 minutes.