Bryanna Clark Grogan’s Vegan Feast Kitchen/ 23rd Century Table

As you might have gathered, I'm experimenting with "veganized" South American food lately-- especially Peruvian (my dad's background) and Ecuadorian (my youngest grandson is part Ecuadorian).  I've also been experimenting with various ways to use quinoa, Quinoa, Soul Food of the Andes. (See this post for a hot quinoa beverage.)  One day, recently, I had some leftover cooked quinoa, and everything else in the house that I needed to try this common type of Andean soup.  It's an easy soup to put together, and open to many variations. I took the liberty of adding some colorful and delicious butternut squash to the soup, which  fed us heartily for several lunches!

You know, it's interesting that alot of Andean food is meat-based (and in Peru, chicken and seafood are used frequently), but in the time of the Incas, the diet was heavily vegetable and corn-based.  It is estimated that the Inca cultivated around seventy crop species.  According to http://peru-facts.co.uk/inca-food.html, "The Inca diet was mainly vegetarian based and involved them eating vegetables such as potatoes as their staple diet. Although potatoes were the main source of food for the Incas other food such as quinoa, beans, squash, sweet potatoes, avocados, tomatoes and manioc were also heavily involved within the Inca peoples diet."


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