At the young age of 23, I found myself pregnant for the second time and weighing over 300 lbs (136 kg) the extra weight was uncomfortable, painful, and caused me to be self conscious and depressed. I needed to find a way to be healthier for my husband and my children, but unfortunately I struggled with an addiction to food. Through the grace of God and a lot of prayers I was able to pull myself together and make some much needed changes starting with my diet.
I became a plant based vegan not for ethical reasons, but for all the health benefits that come along with it. I quickly saw an improvement on my health when in the first 4 weeks I lost a staggering 50 lbs (23 kg) followed by an additional 50 lbs (23 kg) over the course of 9 more months! That’s 100 lbs (46 kg) in just 10 short months!
I continue to eat an abundance of healthy high carb, low fat plant based foods usually consisting of 3000+ calories a day of mostly fruit for breakfast and lunch followed by a dinner that usually consists of some kind of grain and vegetable. Although on occasion I do eat vegetables and grains through out the day as well. This regime has helped me to get fit, stay healthy and physically feel the greatest.
Feel free to ask me any questions about eating healthy by commenting below. – Airin Oluwa
Oil-free Salt-free Nigerian Tomato Stew
Click here to watch the video below.
Ingredients
- Approximately 20-25 tomatoes
- 1 container of cherry tomatoes
- 1 sweet onion
- 2 red bell peppers
- 1 tbsp African or Caribbean Thyme
- 1 tbsp crushed red pepper
- 1 vegetable stock (optional)
- Vegetable broth (optional)
Before you start
- Chop all the tomatoes in half, chop up the onion into large chunks and remove the seeds from the red bell peppers. This does not have to be perfect as we are going to throw it all in the blender.
- In your blender (preferably high speed) throw in your chopped tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, chopped onion, bell pepper, thyme, and crushed pepper.
- Blend till all the ingredients have a nice a smooth consistency. This is all going to get boiled down together so if you need to, you can add water to your blender to get it moving but by doing this it will increase your wait time on the boiling process.
Directions
- Once all the ingredients are blended nice and smooth together throw it into a large pot set at a medium temperature and forget about it on the stove for about 2 hours or until all the water is boiled out of the sauce completely.
- At this point if you need to transfer it into a smaller pot for easier handling you can.
- If you opted in for the vegetable stock add that in at this point breaking it up and distributing it into the stew evenly.
- Turn the heat down to a low temperature add in your desired amount of vegetable broth till you get the consistency you desire. I prefer mine thicker so when I freeze it I can later thin it out or leave it thick depending on the dishes I serve it with.
- Allow this to simmer on the stove till the stock it well mixed in, approximately 10 min.
Serving options
Click the image to enlarge.
Serve the Tomato Stew with your favorite kind of rice and some baked plantain, pounded yam or eba with some spinach or use it as a spaghetti sauce with some other veggies added to it like mushrooms and spinach. One of my personal favorite ways to serve it is to use it to top off a sweet pepper salad with some sauteed onion and tofu.
This simple stew can be used in so many different ways to make several different dishes that you will never get tired of. Making a large pot like this allows for some to be frozen for later usage when in a time crunch.
Enjoy!
Follow Airin on Youtube (where she shares her healthy recipes including healthy Nigerian recipes), Twitter and Facebook to receive updates on her healthy lifestyle.
nice 1 arin,am gonna try it.
I need help on how to shed some weights. Thanks in anticipation
I MUST APPRECIATE YOUR EFFORTS TO EDUCATE THE WORLD ON RICH NIGERIAN MEALS. MORE ESPECIALLY THE “”OKPA WAWA””. THAT WAS A GREAT APPROACH YOU EMPLOYED THERE. I LOVE THAT MEAL , WITH TEA,LIPTON,MILK SHAKE,AKAMU(PAP),CUSTARD,GROUNDNUT PAP,QUAKER OAT,7 UP,COKE…….ALL BEVERAGES ARE ITS GREAT FANS. I JUST LOVE””OKPA WAWA””” . MIND YOU, I’M NOT A WAWA LADY BUT GROWING UP AT ENUGU WAS REAL FUN.
Nne, I also grew up in Enugu! Yay! Anyone who tastes the authentic Okpa Wawa must fall in love. Okpa Oji River and a chilled bottle of coke is one of the best food combos.
Hi Airin! When I searched for oil free stew into the search engine a few seconds ago, I never thought that I would find anything useful. This is an answer to prayer. Thanks so much. God bless you and Happy new year!!
I’m so glad I was able to help. God bless 😉 and happy new year!
I felt the same way!! I cant believe I found you and your page! I have recently switched my diet to plant based vegan and was seeing if anyone made stew without oil and found you. So excited! Thank you!
Wow. You are such an inspiration. I know a lot of Nigerians have a fear of cooking without meat or stock cubes or not putting enough salt. My mom is this way. I know this because one day we were making moi moi and I forgot to tell her that we don’t have any more salt. She got so upset and this was after she had already put 10 stock cubes. In my mind, the main ingredient of stock cubes is salt so I didn’t get what the fuss was all about. She refused to eat it even though it tasted great. It was a rough day. I hope I can get her to change.
Hello Niomy,
Thank you for your comment and support. I personally am not a Nigerian, I’m from Holland. However, I am married to a Nigerian so I had to learn to cook his preferred food. It worked out for me because I love Nigerian dishes. As I became friends with Flo (this is flo’s blog site) and learned most of how to cook Nigerian food from her and a few others I realized that the amount of salt and oil used in most dishes is a lot more then our bodies need. There is a site called chronometer where you can help your mommy track her food through out the day and at the end it will break up all her nutritional facts for the day and show her how healthy/unhealthy she is. I hope the best for you and your mommy. God bless.
Thanks!! Me and my boyfriend are vegan (he’s igbo). I am always struggling to make nigerian dishes in a vegan way! Cant wait for me… Or if you have any suggestions please let me know.
Thanks for your recipes. they’ve helped me out in tight situations. Now my greatest concern is losing postpartum weight without jeopardizing my baby’s health. am scared to do keto while breastfeeding. Can you help with vegan ideas that’ll not impact negatively on my baby?
Rolgy you are welcome. This recipe is a guest post by Airin. I do not have much Vegan Nigerian recipes on this site. Click here to check out the low carb recipes that I do have. You may find them helpful.