Vegan Soups: Fast and Easy

Like the television jingle says, soup is good food. It’s great for weight control because the high water content helps to fill you up with fewer calories. Research shows that starting a meal with soup is likely to help you eat less overall. And of course, all by itself, soup makes a very filling lunch or dinner.

You can make a big pot of soup over the weekend and have it ready in the fridge for fast healthful meals later in the week. It’s portable, too—great to carry to work in a thermos.

It’s wonderful to make old-fashioned soup from scratch, but you can also make yummy and healthful soups in a jiffy using some great vegan convenience products. I am especially smitten with soup-in-a-box, those wonderful soups packaged in aseptic cartons by Imagine Foods and Trader Joe's, among others. And when I just can’t get my act together to soak and cook beans, canned beans are a great soup ingredient. For veggie broth, I use a powdered broth that I get at the food coop. You can also find vegetable bouillon cubes in the grocery store.

If I have an onion in the house and a few cans of beans and tomatoes, I know I’ll be able to pull together some type of soup. Here are three of my favorite super-fast recipes.


Butternut Squash Soup

1 tablespoon olive oil
½ large sweet onion (like Mayan or Walla Walla), coarsely chopped
1 carton Imagine brand Creamy Butternut Squash Soup
1 can diced tomatoes
1 can beans (baby lima, chickpeas, navy, Great Northern or any bean you like)
1 cup frozen or canned corn
Optional: 1 Tofurky sausage, sliced (I like their Beer Brats or Kielbasa for this recipe, rather than the Italian sausages).

Heat the olive oil, and sauté the onion for a few minutes until it is tender and just starting to brown. Add the rest of the ingredients. (You don’t need to drain the canned beans, unless you are using black beans. If using black beans, drain and rinse them or they’ll give the soup an unappetizing color.) Simmer over low heat until heated through. Serve this with toasted sunflower seeds. It makes about 10 one-cup servings.


Black Bean and Rice Soup

This is a great soup to make if you have just a little bit of leftover rice, brown or white.

½ large sweet onion, coarsely chopped
2 cloves garlic, finely minced
1 tablespoon olive oil
½ to 1 cup cooked rice
2 cans black beans, undrained
1 can diced tomatoes
1 cup corn, frozen or canned
2 cups veggie broth or bouillon

Heat the oil and sauté the onion. When the onion is just starting to get soft, add the garlic and keep sautéing until all is tender. Add the rest of the ingredients. Simmer until hot. Serve with salsa, chopped cilantro, guacamole and/or Tofutti brand Sour Supreme. Some crumbled tortilla chips on top are nice, too! Makes about 9 1-cup servings.


Pasta and Bean Soup

This is a fast version of pasta e fagioli, which is the classic Italian soup—more so, even, than minestrone. It’s a little heavy on oil, but this is healthful Mediterranean cooking.

¼ cup extra virgin olive oil (4 tablespoons)
4 large cloves of garlic, minced
2 teaspoons fresh chopped rosemary or 1 teaspoon dried
1 can diced tomatoes
7 cups veggie broth
6 ounces pasta (little pieces, like elbow macaroni or tiny shells)
2 cans cannellini or Great Northern beans (or any white bean will do in a pinch)

Heat oil and sauté garlic for about 2 minutes. Add the tomatoes and the stock and bring to a boil. Reduce to simmer and add the pasta. Cook until the pasta is almost tender, about 7 minutes. Add the beans and cook briefly until everything is heated through. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Serve with good Italian bread and a salad. Makes about 12 one-cup servings.

Every Day Is Earth Day for Vegetarians

Happy Earth Day!

I am vowing to make some changes this week in an effort to make my lifestyle a little more green. And there is plenty of information out there to get me started. Recycling, composting, reducing and reusing, eating locally—you can learn about the best personal choices for the environment on any number of websites. But I am astounded—absolutely stunned—by how many people who are trying to reduce their carbon footprint don’t have any idea about the effect of meat and fish production on the planet. And clearly they are not going to learn about it from most of the national environmental organizations.

I checked the websites of some of the major groups working to reduce global warming. Some, like Greenpeace and EarthFirst!, make specific recommendations about vegetarian diets or link out to articles that tackle the issue of meat-eating and global warming. But most of the environmental giants ignore the issue altogether. Both The Sierra Club and The Union of Concerned Scientists have lists of ten things you can do to slow global warning. Neither suggests reducing meat consumption (let alone adopting a vegetarian diet). Instead, The Sierra Club recommends shopping locally and choosing organic foods, and the UCS promotes “sustainable” choices like grass fed beef.

While this is disheartening, it isn’t all that surprising. It’s fun to shop at the local farmers’ market, and it’s easy to feel good about spending a little bit more on organic foods. Giving up meat, on the other hand—well, that requires real lifestyle change and it can certainly feel like an un-fun, inconvenient sacrifice to many. And the last thing any organization wants to do is alienate its members.

Unfortunately, by ignoring the issue altogether, these groups allow people to believe that eating organic and eating local is enough. And it isn’t—not for those who are really serious about reducing global warming and saving habitats.

For people who aren’t ready to give up meat completely, a program of gradual reduction might be the most realistic approach. The environmental community needs to take a stance on meat-eating and the environment and help their members move beyond simplistic half-way measures to the changes that really matter.

Promoting Vegan Diets: The Way to Anyone’s Heart Is Through Their Stomach

I ate meat and cheese and eggs for the first 28 years of my life. It would never have occurred to me that I could live without them. So when I hear people say "Oh, I could just never give up meat!" I understand exactly how they feel.

And I think it is a big reason that many people simply do not want to know about factory farming. If you can't imagine a life without meat (or cheese or eggs), it creates a lot of uncomfortable inner conflict and psychological discord to hear that meat-eating is unethical. It’s no wonder that so many people ridicule vegans or get downright hostile about this way of eating.

People who believe that vegan foods taste good and that a vegan diet can be fun and delicious are very likely to be at least a little bit more receptive to change. Educating people about the realities of factory farming is powerful and important activism, but so is helping to create an audience that will be receptive to that message. And we do that by serving great vegan food to non vegans as often as possible. Anyone who has tasted rich chocolatey vegan brownies or a great creamy vegan egg salad might be willing to consider that life without eggs is not so bad.

Being too purist is the best way to turn people off to the idea of vegan eating. Everything doesn’t have to be low-fat, whole grain, and sugar-free. Show your friends that vegans love and eat good food and that vegan cuisine is not about deprivation. Start with their stomach and maybe they'll feel ready to open their heart to animals and ethical eating.