Tokwa ala Verde Soup (Make Mine Green Challenge)

August 16, 2022

Hello, Plant Power (Vegan) Community! I never thought this community exist until I came across @itsostylish post about her entry to the current contest that is being run by this community. This will be my very first post here, so let me introduce myself.

I'm Jane, a vegan before 😅, but ever since I work abroad, I somehow broke the vegan diet protocols. However, a big percentage of my diet is composed of vegetables and non-diary/gluten food since I have food intolerances. Except when I am craving my guilty pleasures and during Sunday cheat day 🤭. It's my holiday so I have no choice but to eat whatever food is served in the restaurants here abroad.

If most people put 80% meat in their diet, I, on the other hand, stuff 60% vegetables on my plate, 25% meat, and 15% carbohydrates such as rice. A Filipino can't live a day without eating rice, lol. Sometimes, I just want to go for a vegetable salad when I don't want to consume other kinds of food, especially when I feel heavy or lack appetite.

Again, except in my cheat days 🤭. I believe we also need to spoil ourselves once in a while.
Enough with the introduction, let's back on track...

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I was inspired by @itsostylish to join this contest about Make Mine Green since I love eating green.

When I heard about green soup and must be 100% vegan, that means there shouldn't be meat or any ingredients from animal products. However, I want to add more colors aside from green, so I opted to add some vegetables. Additionally, since this will be my food for lunch, I opted to add some protein to make it
a completely healthy dish. Of course, it's not meat, but rather a protein plant-based food and alternative to meat, no other than, Tofu or Beancurd.

I'll call this...

TOKWA ALA VERDE SOUP

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Tokwa is a Filipino term for tofu. And every since I opted to go for a more vegetable diet, tofu has been my alternative to meat. Besides, tofu is easy to digest compared to meat, and my body lack enzymes for digesting hard meat and other processed food. So tofu has been part of my diet which is a great source of protein.

Since this is a green vegetable soup, there is no need to go to the market to shop for its ingredients. I just rummaged our fridge and looked for whatever vegetables we have in our vegetable compartment.

So here are the ingredients for this green soup.

• a soft block of tofu
• Spinach, coriander, and parsley
• some carrot, pumpkin, and honey fungus mushroom (optionals)
• salt and pepper for seasonings

The procedure is so easy and cooking the soup will only take more or less 10 minutes. Meanwhile, I opted to make green tofu balls for the soup, and some will be set aside for my meal later.

Let's start the cooking!

The first thing I did was to make green tofu balls. It's not literally green-colored tofu balls but has been added with green vegetables. You can actually make it green, just blend the green ingredients with the crushed tofu. I was inspired to make tofu balls after reading @yen1503's latest food blog. And since we have no blender at home, I just...

• Finely chopped the ingredients (coriander, spinach, green onions, carrots) and then combined them with the crushed tofu in a bowl.
• Add corn flour and vegetable oil to bind the ingredients (since we can not use egg for this recipe).

• Shape the tofu-vegetable mixture into balls.
• Fry them in a small pan with a little amount of vegetable oil until they turned golden brown.
• Then set aside.

After making green tofu balls, let's start cooking the green soup. I'm not a fan of onion and garlic, but you can also use them for this soup. In making soup for myself, I usually used ginger as I like its spicy flavor and it's also packed with antioxidants.

• In a small pot, saute ginger for a few seconds, then add the chunks of pumpkin.
• Add water and let it boil.

• Once the pumpkin is slightly tender, add the honey fungus mushroom. Let it boil until the mushroom is cooked.
• A minute before turning off the fire, add the spinach and tofu balls. I set aside some tofu balls for later.
• Season with salt and pepper. (You can add mushroom powder if you want).

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Let's make the meal complete with the soup!

This is perfect to serve while it's hot. But wait, we already have soup, can we add some green salad? Of course, we have it here, and the tofu balls that became like small tofu patties 😊. I made cucumber with cherry tomatoes salad for a side dish and to add more vegetables to my meal.

Edited on Canva

I can't just eat without carbohydrates. I can't eat without rice.

Come and let's eat 😊.

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If you want to join in this contest, the rules are:

• Make a GREEN SOUP recipe, hot or cold, but the main condition is that the soup is green, and not a salty dish, not sweet.
• Give a unique and singular name. Be creative and give your recipe a very strange name.
• The recipe must be 100% vegan.
• Submit it to Plant Power (Vegan) community and use the tags: #vegan #plantbased #plant.

You can also check this post to know more information about it.
https://ecency.com/hive-180569/@plantpoweronhive/the-brand-new-plant-based-9a61467f80dda

I'm inviting @yen1503 @garrethgrey @jenthoughts @shikika to join this contest too 😊.

All photos are mine)