A rich, hearty, plant-based stew with warming spices and a creamy peanut base. Comfort food with soul.
African Peanut Stew is one of my all-time favourite comfort meals. Rich, creamy, and full of warming spices, it’s the perfect balance of hearty and nourishing. The combination of peanut butter, tomatoes, sweet potato and vegetables creates a beautifully velvety broth that’s both satisfying and packed with flavour.
What I love most about this recipe is how quick and simple it is to make with everyday ingredients, yet it tastes like it’s been simmering for hours. It’s naturally filling and easy to adapt with whatever vegetables you have on hand.
Ingredients
1 onion, chopped
1 tin chopped tomatoes
1 tin butter beans (or any beans you like), drained and rinsed
½ cup okra, sliced
1 carrot, sliced
1 aubergine, cubed
1 sweet potato, cubed
1 vegetable stock cube
1 pint water
1 tsp chilli powder
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp ground ginger
2 tsp ground coriander
¼ cup peanut butter
¼ cup peanuts
1 tbsp vegetable oil
Salt to taste
Method
Heat vegetable oil a large pot over medium heat and gently fry the chopped onion until softened.
Pour in the water and crumble in the vegetable stock cube.
Add the chilli powder, cumin, ginger, and coriander. Stir well.
Stir in the peanut butter and heat gently until it melts into the broth and becomes smooth.
Add the chopped tomatoes, butter beans, okra, carrot, aubergine, sweet potato, and peanuts.
Season with salt to taste and stir to combine.
Bring the stew to a boil, then reduce the heat, cover with a lid, and simmer for about 40 minutes, until all the vegetables are tender and the stew is thick and rich.
Notes & Variations
Feel free to add other vegetables if you wish.
Jackfruit works beautifully in this stew for a heartier, meatier texture.
A handful of spinach stirred in near the end adds extra greens and freshness.
Lovely served with mashed potato or rice or on its own in a big bowl with some crusty bread for dipping.
Self-love isn’t about perfection or constant positivity — it’s about compassion, boundaries, forgiveness and learning to come home to yourself. Crystals can be beautiful allies on this journey, helping us soften, heal, and reconnect with our worth on an energetic level.
Below are some powerful heart-centred crystals that support self-love, emotional healing, and inner balance.
Rose Quartz – The Stone of Unconditional Love
Rose quartz is the ultimate stone of love and compassion. It gently encourages self-love and deepens our ability to both give and receive love. Working directly with the heart chakra, it opens the heart to unconditional love — for yourself, others and the world around you.
This nurturing crystal also helps to purify emotional wounds, restore trust, and bring harmony to the heart, making it a beautiful ally for emotional healing and self-acceptance.
It helps:
Release self-criticism and negative self-talk
Heal past emotional pain
Invite gentleness, compassion, and forgiveness
Use rose quartz during meditation, keep it by your bed, or place it over your heart to remind yourself that you are worthy of love exactly as you are.
Red Jasper – Grounded Self-Worth & Strength
Red jasper is deeply connected to the Root Chakra, supporting grounding, stability and a strong sense of safety within the body. It helps build self-love and self-confidence at a foundational level, encouraging you to feel secure, supported and empowered in who you are.
This earthy stone reminds us that true self-love begins with feeling rooted, balanced and at home within ourselves.
It helps:
Build inner strength and courage
Support healthy boundaries
Anchor self-love into everyday actions
Red jasper reminds you that loving yourself also means feeling safe, supported, and rooted in your body.
Moonstone – Emotional Balance & Self-Compassion
Moonstone is deeply connected to the energy of the Moon and the intuitive self. It gently soothes stress and emotional instability, helping to calm the mind and soften overwhelming emotions.
This nurturing stone offers deep emotional healing, encouraging balance, self-compassion and trust in your inner wisdom as you move through life’s natural cycles.
It helps:
Soothe emotional overwhelm
Support intuition and self-trust
Encourage patience and self-acceptance
Moonstone is perfect if your self-love journey includes healing emotional sensitivity or reconnecting with your inner feminine energy.
Rhodonite – Healing Old Wounds
Rhodonite encourages forgiveness — of others and most importantly, of yourself — while supporting emotional honesty and heart-centred truth. It gently heals past wounds and helps release old pain that may be blocking self-love.
This compassionate stone also assists in the discovery of your true passions, helping you reconnect with what lights you up from the inside out.
It helps:
Heal emotional scars
Release resentment and self-blame
Encourage forgiveness and compassion
Rhodonite gently supports the heart while helping you move forward without carrying old pain.
Amazonite – Speaking Your Truth with Love
Amazonite is connected to the Heart Chakra, supporting emotional balance and gentle healing of the heart. It helps to balance moods and dissolve sadness, bringing a sense of calm, hope and reassurance.
This soothing stone also assists in manifesting universal love, encouraging compassion, harmony and a deeper connection to love in all its forms.
It helps:
Release people-pleasing patterns
Encourage healthy communication
Support self-respect and authenticity
Amazonite reminds you that your voice matters and that honouring your truth is an act of self-love.
Malachite – Deep Transformation & Empowerment
Malachite is a deeply transformative stone known for absorbing negative energy and bringing hidden emotions to the surface. It helps eliminate destructive thought patterns and behaviours, supporting awareness, growth and emotional responsibility.
This potent crystal encourages empowered self-love — the kind that invites change, healing and conscious transformation.
It helps:
Expose self-sabotaging patterns
Encourage emotional responsibility
Empower deep personal growth
Malachite supports radical self-love — the kind that says “I choose growth, even when it’s uncomfortable.”
Working with Crystals for Self-Love ✨
You might choose one crystal that resonates with where you are right now, or create a small self-love crystal set.
Try:
Meditating with them
Holding them during journaling
Using them in self-care rituals
Most importantly, remember: crystals don’t create self-love — they support your intention to treat yourself with kindness, patience and respect.
Self-love is a practice, not a destination. Be gentle with yourself along the way.
Perfume, from the French Parfum, a mixture of fragrant essential oils or aroma compounds used to give the human body an appealing scent.
Expensive, opulent and luxurious be they floral, musky, woody, fruity or aquatic, men and women have been wearing perfumes for thousands of years.
But did you know that most of perfumes contain some really icky animal ingredients?
Ambergris – a wax-like growth which is found in the stomach and intestines of about one in a hundred sperm whales. The finest ambergris has a lovely, sweet, musky odor.
Musk – found in a small pouch, in front of the penis of a mature male musk deer. Apparently it possesses a sweet, generous, aromatic intensity bringing an elegance and a radiance to any perfume composition.
Civet – a buttery-yellow paste secreted by the perineal glands of both male and female civets which is said to have a radiant, velvety, floral scent . . .
Castoreum – Is used to produce a spicy ‘leather’ scent and is a thick paste found in the castor sacs between the pelvis and the base of the tail of both the male and female beaver.
Hyraceum – also called ‘Africa stone’ is the petrified rock like excrement of the rock hyrax, it’s one animal scent that can be harvested without actually causing any harm to the animal but why oh why would anybody want perfume made from any animals excrement, no matter how ethically it might have been obtained?
Well, I definitely don’t want to be lathering my body in any of those, that’s for sure!
Luckily, I stumbled across an amazing vegan and cruelty free perfume brand last year whilst browsing the lanes of Brighton called Eden perfumes.
Eden Perfumes have hundreds of scents lines up in bottles on their walls that almost perfectly match that of many well known designer fragrances but without any of the cruelty, no animal ingredients, no animal testing and mostly organic, what’s not to love.
I have 3 myself, copies of Chanel No5, Dior’s Poison and Thierry Mugler’s Angel and you really would struggle to tell the difference between the Eden perfumes and the real designer scents.
Not only that but at only £18 for a 30ml bottle if you buy in store of £24 for the luxury lines, you’re saving a fortune!
Stardust Holistics 