More Peas, Thank You (Harlequin, 2013) is a user-friendly guide to eating healthier and meatless. Author and blogger Sarah Matheny offers over 75 simple and delicious vegetarian recipes that are plentiful in nutrition. In this excerpt, try this Moroccan Chickpea Stew recipe for a meal packed with flavor.
You can purchase this book from the Mother Earth Living store: More Peas, Thank You.
Moroccan Chickpea Stew Recipe
• cooking spray or oil, to grease skillet
• 1 large yellow onion, chopped
• 2 medium carrots, peeled and chopped
• 2 teaspoons cumin
• 1 teaspoon ground, dried ginger
• 1 teaspoon garlic, minced
• 1 14-ounce can chickpeas, drained and rinsed
• 1 14-ounce can fire-roasted tomatoes, drained
• 1 cup vegetable broth
• 1 medium zucchini, diced
• 1⁄2 cup raisins or chopped dried apricots
• minced fresh parsley, chopped almonds, nondairy or organic dairy Greek yogurt, to garnish (optional)
1. Place a large skillet that has been greased with cooking spray or oil over medium-high heat. Add onion and carrots and sauté until they have softened and started to brown, about 5 to 6 minutes. Add cumin, ginger and garlic to the skillet and sauté for an additional minute. Add chickpeas, tomatoes, vegetable broth, zucchini and raisins or apricots, and cook until heated through and flavors have melded, about 15 to 20 minutes.
2. Place parsley, chopped nuts and yogurt in small serving bowls and arrange on the table. Ladle stew into soup bowls and let everyone add the toppings of their choice. Serve over quinoa or rice, if desired. Moroccan Chickpea Stew recipe makes 4 servings of approximately 2 cups each.
Nutrition information per serving: 210 calories, 2 g total fat, 0 g saturated fat, 0 g trans fat, 0 mg cholesterol, 880 mg sodium, 43 g carbohydrate, 9 g fiber, 10 g sugar, 8 g protein, vitamin A 170%, vitamin C 40%, calcium 8%, iron 25%. Optional ingredients and toppings not included in analysis.
More Vegetarian Recipes
• Roasted Chickpea Tacos recipe
• Soy Ginger Soup recipe
My mom is a stubborn woman, bless her heart.
Someone once told me that you can get away with saying anything about anyone if you always bless their heart afterward. I hope my mom sees it that way, bless her heart.
There are, no doubt, deep psychological reasons for my mom’s resistance to change, but those are her stories to tell, not mine. But she’d have to get an actual word processing program on her very large computer. And then, inevitably, she’d call—on her landline, of course—and complain that she couldn’t work on her book, because my blog had stalled her computer with all the pictures that took three hours to download on her dial-up internet. She keeps the dial-up so she can use her provider, which blocks all sorts of racy material. Like any video I post on my blog. Bless her heart.
So you can imagine that when I sprung it on my mom that we weren’t going to be eating meat anymore, she was more than a little unnerved. How could we have Easter without a ham? How could we eat Sunday dinner’s green beans without bacon? How could we go hunting for a Christmas tree and not come back and have cream of potato soup with ham and bacon?
The next year we went tree hunting, we came home and ate this stew. My poor mom. I forgot she doesn’t like chickpeas. Or zucchini. Or cooked tomatoes. But she tries. She bought several dozen copies of our first book and gives them proudly to neighbors and friends and little old ladies at the grocery store. And she tells them they can add chicken to all my recipes. Bless her heart.
I’m sure someday when she writes her memoir, she’ll tell a tale of being tortured by her hippie daughter with her fancy computer, her newfangled phone and her risqué videos. But most of all by her exotic stews, which, though warming to the soul, spit in the face of tradition. Her tradition. Which just so happens to be filled with cream and ham and bacon.
Bless her heart.
Reprinted with permission from More Peas, Thank You: 85+ Vegetarian Recipes for Delicious and Healthy Meals by Sarah Matheny and published by Harlequin, 2013. Buy this book from our store: More Peas, Thank You.
