That which we call a rose

January 20, 2014

Promoted to principal dancer in 2012, Amanda Green has danced many coveted roles with the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, including Odette/Odile in Swan Lake and Princess Aurora in The Sleeping Beauty. Dancing as Juliet tops off her list of great Royal Winnipeg Ballet roles: “We only have a select few full-length ballets, and this is the last one I haven’t done.”

Green follows in the footsteps of previous well-known RWB principals who have danced this role, such as Evelyn Hart, Tara Birtwhistle, and Vanessa Lawson.

The Romeo to her Juliet is Liang Xing, a guest artist from the National Ballet of China, where he has been a principal dancer since 2011. Although Green has only been dancing with Xing since the start of this season, she said things are going very well.

“I have an amazing partner; it’s been great to work with Liang. We’ve been together only a couple of months, but [have] connected really well.” With many impressive credits and a couple of silver medals from international ballet competitions, Xing will be a worthy Romeo.

Preparing for a role of this magnitude requires many hours of background work as well as lengthy discussions with one’s partner to make sure everything is comfortable.

“There’s an evolution on stage; a development of the character. It won’t be the same each time I perform it.”

Amanda Green, Juliet

Green said that among her research methods are watching YouTube videos of other dancers, and breaking things down step-by-step to figure out how she wants to feel or what she wants to be thinking at a particular moment.

Even after opening night, she is always working on her performance and dancing in front of an audience adds another aspect to the role. “There’s an evolution on stage; a development of the character. It won’t be the same each time I perform it,” she said.

Shakespeare’s classic play is an intense emotional journey for the main characters, and Green said that while this role requires a great deal of endurance, the emotional aspect is the most tiring. “I’ve learned to pace myself a bit better; I’m not as hyper at the beginning,” said Green.

She also described the difficulty of getting into character during the rehearsal process, as the ballet is danced in segments; when rehearsing the death scene, for instance, it’s hard to conjure up the same emotion as when she’s danced the whole ballet.

The choreography is by Rudi van Dantzig of the Dutch National Ballet, who was friends with RWB artistic director André Lewis before he passed away in 2012. “I think he’s a genius,” said Green, “his choreography is extremely organic.”

Along with the grand Prokofiev score, gorgeous sets, and stunning costumes that set the scene for 16th century Verona, Amanda Green and Liang Xing will show audiences why this remains one of the most popular classical ballets.

Team Canada could be better

EIC

January 20, 2014

If there are two people in hockey that Canadian fans can trust, they’re Steve Yzerman and Mike Babcock. The two were, and are, instrumental in instilling unprecedented playoff success with the Detroit Red Wings, and Yzerman, most recently, has built a surprisingly formidable Tampa Bay Lightning squad.

The two, Babcock as head coach and Yzerman as executive director, were tasked with picking 25 names out of the richest talent pool in international hockey to represent Canada at the 2014 Sochi Olympic Winter Games. As much as the two men, and a litany of others, deserve Canada’s trust, the selection of Team Canada has many Canadians scratching their heads, and rightfully so.

Selecting Canada’s top six forwards, top four defensemen and goaltender probably only took about four minutes. Sidney Crosby, Steven Stamkos, Jonathan Toews, John Tavares, Corey Perry and, to a lesser extent, Matt Duchene, were inked onto this roster before this year’s NHL season even began.

The same goes for defensemen Shea Weber, Drew Doughty, Alex Pietrangelo and Duncan Keith. Returning gold-medalist goaltender Roberto Luongo was also always going to be the starter, despite national media outlets suggesting otherwise.

Any country would be lucky to boast even close to the same amount of talent as Canada’s top 11 players provide, but depth reigns supreme in hockey and that is where Yzerman obviously had trouble.

Filling out a couple of spots on the bottom half of the roster was easy. For example, forwards Patrick Sharp and Jamie Benn forced Yzerman’s hand with their strong play over the first half of the season. Further down, however, questions seemed to arise.

Yzerman’s strategy in picking this team was based on pre-existing chemistry and balance. Chris Kunitz does not make this team playing anywhere else other than on Pittsburgh’s first line along with Crosby. The same goes for Jay Bouwmeester, as he logs his minutes alongside Pietrangelo in St. Louis.

The case can be made for the inclusion of Kuntiz and Bouwmeester, along with a couple of other fringe player’s; Dan Hamhuis makes this team because Canada’s management wants four left-handed and four right-handed defenseman in order to keep the back end balanced (Hamhuis plays the left side), but his play this season has been very up and down.

Then there are a couple of selections that just do not make sense, especially when compared to players Yzerman left out. The biggest question mark is Rick Nash as opposed to Martin St. Louis. Playing in Russia means a bigger ice surface therefore speed is needed; Nash possesses an incredible combination of skill and size, but his production in New York leaves much to be desired. On the flip side, St. Louis is small, nimble, and has been putting up monster numbers all season.

Also, James Neal in ten fewer games has seven more points than Jeff Carter, and Neal possesses an incredible shot, which would mesh incredibly well with the number of playmakers on Team Canada.

Even after those mentioned, questions still exist. No Joe Thornton? No Claude Giroux? Mike Smith over Corey Crawford?

The sheer number of questions only arises when a talent pool is as deep as Canada’s, and critiquing a team with this amount of skill is a problem most countries would love to have. But if Canada can win gold, there won’t be much to argue.

Tarantino Burlesque revives the Grindhouse

Peak Web

January 20, 2014

Considering Quentin Tarantino’s affinity for powerful female characters, it’s fitting that the vivacious ladies of Vancouver’s burlesque scene would shake their tassels in a salute to the genre-bending director. In burlesque, confidence is everything. A great backdrop story also helps, and Tarantino’s imagination offers the perfect sharp-shooting and sword-wielding femme fatales to emulate.

If you couple this with a bit of cinematic history, a Tarantino-inspired burlesque show was inevitable. A grindhouse is a (mainly defunct) theatre that showcases the B movies and exploitation films that Quentin is so fond of echoing. Due to their graphic nature, grindhouses were named after the burlesque theatres in New York City where stripteases and bump ‘n grind dances were performed.

Following on the heels of Beatles Burlesque and Dirty Dancing Burlesque, Tarantino Burlesque featured some of Vancouver’s best known burlesque dancers, backed by the Blue Morris Band: Voodoo Pixie, Little Miss Risk, Sparkle Plenty, Mama Fortuna and Ariel Helvetica.

It’s Friday night and the lineup for the show stretches far past the front doors of Fanclub on Granville Street. Show-goers huddle under umbrellas, but some may be disappointed — the venue is already packed and the show is scheduled to start in two minutes. Every seat is full, bodies line the staircase and faces peak over the wrought-iron balcony.

They pull off Voodoo Pixie’s shirt, and the first of the nipple tassels are exposed.

A few fans wear Tarantino-inspired costumes and red wine is ubiquitous. The Blue Morris Band steps out, beginning the show with one of the most quintessential tracks — really, it couldn’t have started any other way — the opening number from Pulp Fiction, “Miserlou.” The crowd cheers in anticipation.

First up is Voodoo Pixie, the choreographer of the show, but the other dancers quickly hit the stage, expressing a Tarantino-like penchant for violence; they pull off Voodoo Pixie’s shirt, and the first of the nipple tassels are exposed.

More show-goers are let in, and the place is filling to the brim as Little Miss Risk takes the stage. Sauntering around as Jackie Brown, Little Miss Risk is skilled as a dancer, but strangely has a distressed look throughout her performance. One act quickly melds into the next, rotating between the dancers and the band performing solo. The band is fronted by Red Heartbreaker, and her soulful crooning definitely begins to steal the show.

Perhaps fuelled by the ever-flowing red wine, the crowd begins to bump ‘n grind amongst themselves as Mama Fortuna takes the stage as the highly anticipated Mia Wallace. “You Never Can Tell” plays as she dances to her moderately-nude version of the Jack Rabbit Slims Twist Contest.

Red Heartbreaker, slowly losing clothes herself, sings a fantastic rendition of “Girl, You’ll be a Woman Soon.” One excited fan, obviously lost in a Tarantino reverie, runs to the stage and begins to dance as close to the spotlight as possible.

Tarantino Burlesque finishes strongly with Voodoo Pixie showing the crowd that one doesn’t need to be a vibrant vixen to be sexy. Instead, Voodoo Pixie plays Marvin Nash from Reservoir Dogs, and dances to “Stuck in the Middle With You” before throwing a cut-off ear into the crowd.

With killer tunes and a powerful performance from the Blue Morris Band, Tarantino Burlesque was a huge success. The crowd was pleased, the place was packed and every performer sauntered with overwhelming confidence. With this amount of popularity, these performers may have to start looking for a bigger venue.

Or perhaps a grindhouse of their very own.

TransLink: not that bad

EIC

January 20, 2014

Over this past winter break, I felt like all my social media news feeds were clogged with complaints of travel troubles. Whether it was cars turned around by shut down roads, cancelled flights or delayed busses, the time of the year when everyone wants to get around coincides, of course, with the most impossible time to do so.

I empathize with my fellow student traveller; we are all trying to get to family that most of us don’t see any other time of year. I cannot even begin to imagine how bad things have been for those trapped in eastern Canada trying to get back in time for the new semester.

When considering travelling, I think about the day-to-day travelling we do in Vancouver. I actually don’t find the transit in Vancouver to be all that bad, at least for me in the city and getting to SFU.

Coming from a substantially smaller city, I am used to buses that come every 45 minutes — if they bother to come at all –— with many major neighbourhoods not being connected to public transit lines at all because they are “too new” and not developed enough to expand bus lines. Although, last time I checked, a ten-year-old development isn’t really all that new.

Considering the chaos of transit in winter, I feel my sour expectations in Vancouver changed.

On winter break, considering the chaos of Canadian winter weather and transit, I feel my sour transit expectations in Vancouver changed. The city is trying, at the very least. The new Evergreen line is expected to go in sometime in 2016. If I miss my bus, there is another one in 15 minutes. If the lines for the 145 are super clogged at Production, they send extras.

Consider Greyhound: they won’t even call ahead to your connecting city to see if you’ll make your next bus if your current one is running four hours late! But I digress.

There are definitely problems with Vancouver transit, but there always will be. We all want to get somewhere, preferably faster than what is possible.

I have a long list of resolutions this New Year, and one of them is to be a little more patient. To maybe leave my house a little earlier to account for possible transit delays, to give transit police the benefit of the doubt — being just normal people doing a crappy job — and to accept that, overall, the transit in Vancouver isn’t that bad.

We get to transit in fairer weather than most of Canada, and we have a city that is actively trying to encourage its occupants to travel greener. Let’s make the best of what we have.

This modern love

Peak Web

January 20, 2014

In Her, Spike Jonze’s latest film set in the not too distant future, the colour blue almost never appears. The men dress in 30’s style high-waisted pants with no belts, and no scenes take place in a car or within view of a street. No one uses keyboards or cords, and the film’s love interest — a hyper intelligent OS who names herself Samantha — is never seen.

Yet the film’s greatest strengths are in its subtractions; in what it hides from us as viewers, and the images and conceptions it forces us to create for ourselves.

Our protagonist is Theodore Twombly, a lonely, recently divorced writer who pens incredibly personal letters for other people. Beautifully portrayed by Joaquin Phoenix, Theodore has a knack for understanding other people’s desires but has trouble pinning down his own — he spends his nights aimlessly surfing the web, playing high tech video games, and browsing chat rooms for anonymous phone sex.

However, Theodore meets his match in Samantha (Scarlett Johansson), the first artificially intelligent operating system. With the help of an earpiece and a vintage chic iPhone equivalent, Theodore and Samantha quickly bond. She questions whether her feelings are even real, while he questions whether he’ll ever feel the same way he did with his ex-wife, Catherine (Rooney Mara).

When an ill-advised blind date set up by best friend Amy (Amy Adams) falls flat, Theodore retreats to his Art Deco loft to consummate his budding relationship with Samantha — we’re left to imagine what this might look like, just as they do.

The film’s greatest strengths are in its subtractions; in what it hides from us as viewers.

Scarlett Johansson’s tender performance as Samantha is at the heart of Her’s success — she makes us feel the way Theodore does, as though she is right there in the room, and her chemistry with Phoenix more than makes up for their lack of physical intimacy. There are many moments of tenderness, argument, and heartbreaking honesty between the two, made no less powerful by Samantha’s lack of human form.

Jonze never shows his hand — the unnerving subtext of Theodore and Samantha’s union is never far from the surface, and Catherine’s scorn towards Theodore’s perceived solipsism proves just as persuasive as Amy’s wholehearted support.

But Theodore is no different from the rest of us, and his romantic notions no more unrealistic; the unconventionality of his love for Samantha only highlights the same fears and insecurities that we all share.

In one scene, Samantha writes a piece of music to capture a beautiful afternoon shared between her and Theodore. “We don’t really have any photographs of us,” she tells him. “I thought this song could be like a photo, that captures us in this moment of our life together.” Samantha is expressing the film’s key theme: the need to connect and share one’s life with others — be they human, or artificially intelligent.

Like Theodore and Samantha, Jonze has found a way to capture that sentiment, and to share it with the world. Her is a beautifully shot and impeccably crafted film that, like the best science fiction, tells us more about our present than its future. It asks nuanced, complicated questions about what it means to live and to love, and offers the answers through the story of two souls who undertake the journey together — and like all the best relationships, both parties better themselves in the process.

It isn’t just Her. It’s Them.

Student strikes against Enbridge

EIC

January 20, 2014

Speaking out against the Enbridge Northern Gateway Project, SFU student, Mia Nissen, underwent a week-long fast to protest the pipeline at the end of last year.

Nissen made the decision to go on a hunger strike over winter break as a way to take an immediate and noticeable stance on the issue. During the week of Christmas up until New Year’s Eve, Nissen subsisted only on Gatorade and multivitamins.

The Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline has been a hot button topic in the news since it was announced in 2006. The line would carry distilled crude oil from Alberta’s oilsands to the coastal city of Kitimat, BC.

Nissen began her strike in response to the approval of Enbridge’s latest project by the National Energy Board Joint Review Panel on Dec. 19. The Panel cited it as being an important key in boosting the Canadian economy, and the federal government has been given 180 days to decide the pipeline’s fate.

However, this decision has also been strongly contested by First Nations and environmental advocacy groups who worry about the catastrophic effects that a potential oil spill from the pipeline could have on the environment.

Adding her own voice to the fray, Nissen got creative during her week-long strike with her campaign by making a video of her lip syncing to “Electric Avenue”. The video was a means of voicing her opposition to the government’s use of crude oil by promoting an electricity-based society.

Nissen, who is finishing her liberal and business studies degree, explained the inspiration to give up food for a week: “I can’t just be a passive observer and watch companies like Enbridge continue committing their environmental crimes. It’s not just about this pipeline project — I am looking at the bigger picture. This is about the environment, about social justice.”

The young activist has also organized other events that protest the building of the pipeline, including a gathering in front of the Vancouver Art Gallery as an effort to get signatures in opposition to the project. She has also participated in several protest marches against Harper.

Even though her efforts have gone mostly unnoticed by politicians thus far, Nissen is still hopeful for a sustainable environmental future by forgoing the use of oil entirely in favour of eco-friendly alternatives.

Nissen says there could be long term economic effects in the event of an oil spill. Fishing and community interests could be wiped out, and the government would have to spend millions of dollars to clean up a spill, she explained.

Despite Enbridge’s promises, Nissen, referencing the work of SFU researcher Tom Gunton, says there is simply no guarantee that would safeguard such a vast structure against a spill. She continued, “The transportation of oil is not the issue, but rather the weaning of our society off of the oil addiction.”

As for what the strike taught her, Nissen says she has taken away more from the experience than just an empty stomach. “I learned that there is fierce opposition to this project, and that I am not alone anymore. I’ve learned also that the spirit needs nourishment as much as the body. This is about humanity; we are fighting for the future.”

Winless Clan showing signs of life

EIC

January 20, 2014

Despite sitting 0–5 in Great Northwest Athletic Conference play, the Clan men’s basketball team is showing signs of life in 2014. Opening the calendar year with three back-to-back losses was disappointing, but the team is finally starting to come together and show composure in big games against top-ranked teams.

The Clan opened the year with losses against Alaska Fairbanks and Alaska Anchorage, but the team’s game against the GNAC third-place Nanooks showcased some of their unachieved potential. The men fell 58–67, but Taylor Dunn and Sango Niang led the campaign with 15 and 10 points each.

Later that weekend, against the Seawolves, it was Justin Cole who led the team with 24 points, proving the importance of his addition this season, while Dunn added 16 and David Gebru had 15.

On an individual level, the team has some great talent and their best games have seen the five men on the floor come together for a great team effort both on offence and defence. However, they have suffered from slow starts and disjointed play.

That wasn’t the case one week later when the men travelled to Bellingham, WA to face GNAC leaders Western Washington, who are also ranked 20th in NCAA Div. II. This game saw one of the most notable team performances of the season and the Clan headed into the second half with a two-point lead. Dunn led the scoring with 18 followed by Ibrahim Appiah with 17, Cole with 14 and Niang with 11, proving that when the big players get together, there is a lot of potential for this underrated team.

Unfortunately, WWU proved their mettle and their ranking in the second half, as they came back with a vengeance to take the game 82–69, but the Clan’s performance against a very tough competitor proves that they have the ability to play in this league, they just need to tighten up their game.

The team lost in its return to the friendly confines of West Gym, 100–70 against Montana State-Billings, but another committed team effort may be enough to secure their first GNAC victory of the season sooner than later.

Gender stereotypes saturate media

EIC

January 20, 2014

Last week, students representing post-secondary newspapers across Canada participated in NASH, the Canadian University Press’s annual event for networking, education, and celebration of Canadian student journalists.

I was lucky enough to go with The Peak to the event. On our third night, I saw key-note speaker Aliya-Jasmine Sovani, of MTV fame, give a speech predominantly about her career in journalism and body image in mainstream media.

This seemed like a promising topic. She seemed to want to address the problem of the strict definition of beauty in media as a journalist, and a model who has scars on her body from a terrible accident in her past.

Her speech served to perpetuate that same problem, though. She contradicted herself creating confusion about the meaning of beauty, confusion that perpetuates negative gender stereotypes, and that is apparently prominent in North American mainstream media.

Hopefully we’re more concerned about losing women to cancer, rather than just their boobs.

I’m disappointed now that I walked out of her speech halfway through, as I missed some highlights that others pointed out afterwards, such as this very conventionally beautiful woman calling herself a poster child for unconventional beauty, and her asking an audience of journalism students whether or not they keep up with the news.

But, a couple of parts from the portion of her speech that I saw stood out to me: her story about her breast-cancer awareness commercial, and an off-hand comment about straight men.

Her sentiments about the commercial perhaps best exemplify the problem with her speech. The commercial features a woman in a bikini — a role Sovani took on short notice — walking along a pool-side, at whom every person in the pool stares at or gestures towards.

It ends with the statement: “You know you like them, now it’s time to save the boobs.” It’s supposed to be a fun, sexy, and fresh way to look at breast cancer.

Of course, there are inherent problems with the commercial itself. As several other students at NASH brought up to me, hopefully we’re more concerned about losing women to cancer, rather than just their boobs. Hopefully our society sees women as more than boobs, and hopefully we can see a variety of body types as sexy. Hopefully.

But aside from this, Sovani also introduced the video by saying in an offhand comment that she wished she had taken a laxative and done sit-ups beforehand. Albeit in a joking manner, she effectively suggested not only the extreme importance of trying to achieve one strict type of beauty, but also justifyied adopting a disease to achieve it.

Later in her speech, she said, in another off-hand comment, that all straight men lie, mostly because they look at other girls while with their own girlfriends. In saying this, she effectively separates straight men from women and homosexual men, and underhandedly inserts into the public subconscious the idea that proud women consider men liars, and that to be a straight man is to be a liar.

Beyond these comments being offensive in themselves, they’re complicated in these circumstances. The fact that these sentiments are paired with a speech on respecting positive body images is what creates the confusion resulting in negative stereotypes being swallowed easily, being almost equated with positive ones.

Am I taking Sovani’s fun, off-handed comments too seriously? Maybe. But I can’t ignore what appear to be the symptoms of the deep-set problems of mainstream gender images. We need to ask questions when people with media power make uninformed comments such as these without blinking an eye.

Sovani has her heart in the right place. But her speech is a reminder that perpetuation of gender stereotypes is not okay, even and especially when done in a casual way by a person with influence in the media.

Question political propaganda

EIC

January 20, 2014

Political ads may be sharp criticisms of a candidate or party, but they tell an incomplete story, often leaving out inconvenient details. They claim to be informing the people, but they should be seen as nothing more than political propaganda, distorting and subverting the truth.

While every political group is guilty of this, my investigation for this article hinged on an online image that makes four claims about the prime minister, allegedly Canada’s “worst economist ever” (see above).

The first two claims stem from blog posts written last fall by Ralph Goodale, the deputy leader of the Liberal Party and former Minister of Finance under Paul Martin. In the original blogs, Goodale does not provide sources for his information, so readers cannot check the facts for themselves. In fact, I could not find any evidence to support the first claim.

While I will concede that Goodale may have had greater access to Canadian economic records in his position as finance minister, the information available to the majority of Canadians does not cover the period of time during which R. B. Bennett served as prime minister, — the Great Depression. Without any accessible evidence on which to base this claim, we, as critical thinkers, cannot readily accept it.

The second claim, that the Harper administration has added $169 billion to the national debt, also requires some examination. While the national debt has increased since the Conservatives first came to power in 2006, the figures here have been slightly exaggerated.

According to figures retrieved from the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, which runs a debt clock to show the per-second increase in debt, less than $100 billion had been added to the debt at the time Goodale wrote his blog. Currently, Conservative debt is just above $123 billion, which is still not great, but is better than the $169 billion claimed both by Goodale and the attack ad.

While the national debt has increased since the Conservatives first came to power, the figures here have been slightly exaggerated.

The third claim is true, the last six Conservative budgets have all been deficits. What this claim fails to point out, though, is that each of these deficit budgets has come after the Great Recession, the worst global economic crisis since the end of the Second World War.

While the Conservative government could have taken an easier road by raising taxes and cutting some of their financial initiatives, such as the Universal Childcare Benefit Plan, they made the choice to remain true to promises that had been made prior to forming the government, such as keeping taxes low.

As the Canadian economy continues to recover and the deficit in each budget since the Great Recession decreases, barring another crisis, it is likely that the government will be able to start tackling this problem in the foreseeable future.

Finally, concerning the fourth claim, while some elements of taxation have increased, such as Canada Pension Plan, federal taxes have not increased under the Conservative government.

According to a statement from the Ministry of Finance’s website, “The federal tax burden is now the lowest it has been in 50 years,” and the government since 2006 has “cut taxes for an average family of four by $3,220.” I don’t know about you, but I could definitely use an extra three thousand dollars in my bank account. I mean, that’s a full-time semester!

So as we move into next year’s election and more ads like this begin to appear, I only ask that we think critically about what we are reading and hearing.

Don’t be sheep. Be critical thinkers and look into both the information and its source, lest you become a tool in a political propaganda machine.

Salt and Paper: Vegetarian West African peanut soup

Peak Web

January 20, 2014

If there’s one thing university tends to be synonymous with, it’s a decline in health. This is true for those who arrive and rely on cafeteria food and alcohol for sustenance — particularly on this cold mountain of ours where culinary options are limited.

An appropriate solution is this: create wholesome dishes that will nurture stressed student bodies. This column, appearing here every other week, will aim to tell stories, share recipes and seek out fellow foodies.

Post-holidays, January comes rushing in with its cold wind and seemingly endless wall of bleak, winter months. The days are shorter but feel longer, and this makes for a three- or four-month period when all we can do is hope for spring.

There are a few remedies to the SADs that January brings with it, though: a hot cup of tea, a good book, and a big, steaming bowl of hearty soup.

If anything, winter is a good excuse to stay inside and cozy up with a good novel (or textbook) and to perfect some homemade soup recipes. I offer this one up as the first in a series of delicious and easy recipes that — I hope — will warm you through to the end of these dark months (and exams).

It sounds like a weird combination, but trust me on this one. The spicy, peanut-y flavours balance out the tomato base, and chard or kale lend a bit of colour. Don’t slam it until you try it.

• 1 tablespoon oil (I prefer coconut)

• 6 cups vegetable broth

• 1 medium red onion, chopped

• 2 tablespoons peeled and minced fresh ginger (or powdered ginger)

• 4 cloves garlic, minced

• 1 teaspoon salt

• 1 bunch kale or chard, chopped into 1 inch strips. Go with your gut on how much you want to toss in.

• 3/4 cup unsalted peanut butter (chunky or smooth)

• 1 cup canned crushed tomatoes

• Hot sauce, like Sriracha

• 1/4 cup roughly chopped peanuts, for garnish (optional)

Add oil to a pot and add onion until translucent, about 5 minutes. Add garlic and ginger and cook for another minute. Add salt, then broth, and then bring to boil. While broth is warming, whisk peanut butter and crushed tomatoes in a separate bowl. Add some of the heated broth and whisk to incorporate; add this mixture to the pot. Lower heat to medium low. Add as much or as little hot sauce as you’d like — I like mine spicy, so I added about 1-2 tablespoons. Toss in the chard or kale, and simmer on low for about 15 minutes. Garnish with crushed peanuts if you’d like.

*Recipe adapted from cookieandkate.com