Steven's Spicy Black Bean Soysage Stew

YUM! This stew was great. It was cold outside and my sweetheart had just gotten home from tour and I wanted to whip up something hearty in a hurry. This was perfect. Surprisingly few ingredients combine to make a delicious, warm stew with just a spark of heat to it. The sweet potatoes are a nice touch and, though CD suggests serving this over rice with a soysage patty on the side, we served it over quinoa (you're not surprised) and ground up the soysage and just threw it in the pot. The soysage is just spicy enough to provide a little kick throughout the stew. I wish I'd doubled the batch - it was so, so good. Sometimes vegetarian eating doesn't provide that meaty part of the meal (for lack of a better phrase) but there is absolutely nothing missing from this meal. In that vein, I was thinking while eating this that people often ask me, "So, what do you eat?" I suppose I wondered the same thing before becoming a vegetarian. However, this one meal alone had me eating a much wider variety of foods than I ever did before I became a vegetarian. I know I am much more healthy now than before and, as long as I'm touting the benefits of vegetarian eating, I recently had my bone density checked (I don't drink cows' milk and eat very little dairy). It was the highest they had seen at the health fair at Navy Pier. I was 3.4. I was so high I was off the charts. -.7 and higher is considered okay. As you can probably tell, I'm pretty pleased with myself.