Peanut Soup and Saving the Elephants

This is a Ghanaian soup I've been making a lot, and I've modified it to use ingredients I can find at the grocery store.  I know it sounds really weird, but it is totally delicious!

Ingredients:

1 can stewed tomatoes

3 overflowing tablespoons of peanutbutter (any kind will do)

about a quarter of an onion

1/8 cup (ish) oil (I usually use olive if I have enough)

1 tbsp garlic

1 tbsp ginger

1 tsp paprika or cayenne pepper (optional)

1 or 2 tbsp salt

a few shakes of black pepper

Chop up the onion as fine as you can, then put all of the ingredients in a pot.

Mash them with a potato masher until it's one consistency.

Let simmer for about a half hour or until you feel like eating.

Serve on top of rice.  Eat with your right hand.  Serves two or three.

A note about oils:  In Ghana, this meal is made using palm oil.  Palm oil is, in my opinion, delicious.  However, I recently learned that most of the sources of palm oil to the United States are palm tree plantations that are destroying the habitat of Asian elephants.  A lot of products are made with palm oil—unfortunately a few popular brands of peanutbutter are too.  Whenever I have a choice and can afford it (often there is no price difference), I try to choose products that do not contain palm oil, and I'd like to encourage you all to do the same.  We can be environmental superheroes—even in our choice of peanutbutter!  Let's do what we can to save the elephants!