Vegan Vegetable Crock Pot Stew

I felt the need to take a break from meat. Here’s my take on a Vegan Vegetable Crock Pot Stew.

– 2 red potatoes
– 1/2 Spanish Onion
– 3 branches of celery
– 1 large thick carrot
– 2 slices of ginger
– 2 cloves of garlic
– salt, pepper, thyme
– medium can of diced tomatoes
– can of vegetable broth (2 cups) …which apparently provides no nutritional value according to the label. You’re just getting it for the flavors.

Chopped it all up and put it in the crock pot on low for 8 hours while I went to work. I did have thoughts of the crock pot malfunctioning and burning down the building. And once I thought that, I accidentally dropped part of the casserole dish hard into the crock pot heating element. Now I really thought it would malfunction. All this thinking while I’ve been reading this book, The Intention Experiment –about scientific case studies of how thoughts and intentions can influence reality. So I stood around after I turned the crock pot, waiting to see if anything explodes, while I tried to think good thoughts of coming home to a non-burned down apt eating this stew. It seemed fine and I was late for work, so I left. As I locked my door behind me, I noticed the building management just put up a fire extinguisher in my hallway. The must’ve put it there that morning. Did I just blow your mind?

Came home and added about three tablespoons of corn starch to thicken it up. I strongly advise adding corn starch to some of the liquid in a separate bowl and whip it up. Then pour that into the rest of the pot. When I was little, I tried to thicken up a can of Campbell’s chicken soup. I kept pouring the corn starch into the pot and it wouldn’t thicken up. So I kept adding more but with no luck. I think I put in half the box. I still ate it.

Back to the veggie stew… I didn’t think it tasted good. I added some Adobo seasoning and Ketchup. Now it tasted a little better. What kicked it up a notch, was adding some Caribbean habanero hot sauce. And even better was adding some of Rusty’s queso-dip (bottle of salsa verde mixed with melted pepper jack cheese).

My Vegan Veggie Stew = C- …+ ketchup + Adobo = C …+ Caribbean habanero hot sauce = B- …+ queso-dip = B ≠ Vegan

…We ate this while watching the BSC Championship last night. Russ blamed me for Texas losing because I had thoughts of them screwing up during that botched shuttle pass that led to an Alabama defensive touchdown.

…and now Jeff just asked if I want to participate in a Vegan focus group as I write this post out. And it’s way out on Ave J close to Di Fara’s pizza. My thoughts are manifesting in front of my eyes.