One of the first meatless recipes I made when dabbling with vegetarian food was this one. You can make this on the stovetop but I use a big six quart cropckpot. (If you are using a smaller crockpot scale down the ingredients accordingly). takes less than thirty minutes to prepare and makes enough food for a week!
Ingredients
- veganaise or veggie spread (this is non dairy mayonnaise which can be bought at most health foods store)
- parmesan/romano cheese
- 2 or 3 tomatoes
- 10 carrots
- 8 peices celery
- 2 zuchini
- 5 cloves of garlic
- two 6oz cans of tomato paste and one 28oz. can of crushed tomatoes
- about 6 cups of water
- garlic powder to taste
- basil to taste
- oregano to taste
- 1 teaspoon black pepper
- 1/2 cup olive oil
- two containers of firm tofu
- spelt macaroni
You may be wondering why I bother using vegannaise spread in a lacto-ovo recipe. It is a vegetarian recipe not a vegan recipe, so why not use real sour cream? I really don’t have a reason for this. It’s just my personal preference. I have never tried the recipe with anything else, although I imagine it would be good. But I like the taste with vegannaise, lacto-ovo or not, so I use that.
Now getting back to the recipe.. first put the tomato paste and crushed tomatos into the crockpot and add the water. Chop up all the vegetables into bite sized peices. Put them into the crockpot. Next mince the garlic and add that. Then add thespices and olive oil.
Turn crockpot on for 6 or 8 hours. (Do not add macaroni to the crockpot) Cook noodles seperately on the stovetop. Same with tofu. Take out as much tofu as needed (about 1/5 cake per person) right before you are ready to eat, chop it up into small peices, and heat it in the microwave. Add the macaroni and tofu to your soup right before you are ready to eat. Also add a few dollops of vegannaise and let it melt into the soup, then sprinkle soup with cheese, and enjoy!