Fruits & Veggies Monday #35: "Spicy Rasta Ital Soup"

For a taste sensation in soup form I urge you to make it Rasta-style because oh my goodness, this is the best soup I ever tasted!  You may have seen my recent post - "For Good Health, Eat Like A Rasta! -  "Ital is Vital" - in which I talked about their absolute respect for their bodies and health... eating only natural wholefoods free from artificial, processed or refined ingredients.  They don't even add salt to cooking but instead conjure beautiful flavours using their skills with herbs and spices.  (Seriously, the more I learn about the Rastas the more I love them!  A people of good health and good music!)

So I was flicking through an e-book I downloaded recently and noticed there were a few recipes in it, so I thought why not try one of them out?  I almost had all the ingredients... Only I substitited callaloo with spinach, and scotch bonnet with chilli, as unfortunately on the north-west coast of Ireland we're not well stocked in Caribbean ingredients.  Oh well, this is absolutely delicious despite that, and I urge you all to try it too!

Ingredients:

4 potatoes

3 carrots

1 sweet potato

1/2 small pumpkin

300g spinach (traditionally callaloo if you can find some!)

2 onions

1 red pepper

4 medium tomatoes

3 bulbs garlic

400g chickpeas

100g red lentils

400ml coconut milk

2 tsp black pepper

1-2 tsp chilli flakes

2 tblsp paprika

2 tbslp parsley

1 tblsp thyme

To Serve with the Soup:

For a bread recipe please see: Easy VEGAN Rosemary & Hemp Seed Mini Flat Breads

For a scone recipe please see: Spelt & Almond Scone Stars

Diections:

Slice and dice all your veggies into bite-sized pieces in any style you like. 

Chop the spinach as small as you can... unless you don't mind big limp leaves floating in your soup!

No need to pre-cook the lentils... just throw them in the pot along with all the other ingredients.

Pop into the oven at 200 degrees Celsius for about 3 hours until all the veg is soft enough to eat.  Give it a good stir... and serve!  (I always find soup tastes even better the next day after it's been sitting overnight, and the consistency is always better then too).  

Serve with freshly baked bread or scones.  Yummy!

Many thanks to @lenasveganliving for continuing to host this wonderful weekly contest!  For inspiration and details how to join in, please see Lena's post here.
 

To find out what my "Make It Healthy Project" is all about, and how you can be involved in growing this project, please click here.

("5 Cs" shared with kind permission from @kiwideb)