Sloppy Georges!

I’ve been wanting to come up with a good vegetarian sloppy joe recipe for the Food For All recipe series for a while now. I thought it wouldn’t be that hard, I’d just look up a sloppy joe recipe and switch out cooked lentils for the ground meat and “tada!” I’d have another easy and tasty FFA recipe. My motives were a good part selfish. I loved my mom’s sloppy joes as a kid and I’ve been wanting to develop a vegetarian version I really enjoyed for many years now.

I started with calling up mom and asking for her sloppy joe recipe. Turns out, its made mostly of bottled ketchup and when I added up the cost, even after substituting lentils for the ground meat, it was too expensive to be a FFA recipe when made with organic ingredients and well, wasn’t all that healthy either. I try to get some nutritional balance into FFA recipes and make sure every one of them contains at least one vegetable. Unless you counted the tomatoes in the ketchup as a veggie, my mom’s recipe, while super tasty, wasn’t going to cut the FFA standards for price or for nutrition.

To address the cost I tried mixing up a sloppy joe sauce recipe I found that used tomato paste instead of ketchup. Despite all the things the recipe called for adding to the sauce, it still ended up tasting just like tomato paste and having the same unfortunate texture. After eating a bowl full of tomato paste slathered lentils on bread, my enthusiasm for this culinary project severely waned.

After finishing up the SNAP Challenge of eating on only $4.50 a day last week, my enthusiasm for creating new FFA recipes renewed. During the Challenge the only thing that kept me sane was having those FFA recipes to fall back on, which answered the question, “what’s for dinner?” without having to do crazy spreadsheets for each meal I cooked to make sure it came in on budget. The FFA recipes are already costed out and nutritionally balanced and after using them for the SNAP Challenge I truly realized what a helpful tool they are for people trying to eat a healthy diet on a tight budget. I was mulling a few ideas over in my head for FFA recipes while in Indianapolis this weekend celebrating my 5th wedding anniversary with my husband, Mike. For lunch on Saturday we went to one of our favorite Indy dining spots, the Three Sisters Café. Three Sisters serves meat, but has an extensive vegetarian offerings section that we consistently find delightful.

And what did I find on the Three Sisters menu? I’d always past over an offering called, “barbequed grains.” It just didn’t sound that appetizing and when you read the description of mixed grains in a apple butter barbeque sauce with sweet potato on a wheat bun it didn’t sound much better. Mixed grains on a whole grain bun? Sounded boring as heck. I continued down the menu when suddenly it occurred to me, maybe it’s like a sloppy joe! I asked the waitress and, indeed, she confirmed that the unfortunately named dish was a vegetarian sloppy joe type of deal. I ordered it and was convinced that whole grain berries on a wheat bun actually works quite nicely. I went home armed with a plan for a new FFA recipe.

I made my own version of the Three Sisters barbequed grains tonight and it turned out delicious. Its not quite a sloppy joe flavor, so I’ve renamed it Sloppy Georges (G being for both George and grains.) I’ve costed it out and what would otherwise be a very cheap meal still barely qualified for FFA ($2 a serving or less) due to the high cost of the organic bread it is served on. When you get into processed food products like bread, organic food really does get pretty darn costly. I’m kind of amazed I was able to fit it into a FFA recipe at all.

I’d like to try this recipe with lentils in place of the wheat berries sometime soon to make the dish more nutritionally diverse, instead of serving wheat berries on wheat bread. Its still nutritionally pretty darn great, but lentils would make it even more so. At this point I need to cook it still to check that the texture works and that the lentils don’t take the price too high for FFA. Once I try it I’ll post how it went.

Sloppy Georges
1 cup dry wheat berries (bulk bins)
1 T canola oil
½ a large onion, any color, sliced in thin half moon slices
1 medium carrot, shredded
½ a medium yam, shredded
8 slices of any Rudi’s whole grain organic bread

the sauce
1 T canola oil
½ a large onion, any color, minced fine
¾ cup prepared apple butter
¼ cup ketchup (Muir Glen is cheapest per ounce)
1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
1 T liquid smoke (not available at the co-op)
¼ tsp red pepper flakes (bulk herb bins)
1 tsp apple cider vinegar
Salt and pepper to taste

For the sauce: heat the oil in a small saucepan, then add the minced onion, stirring frequently. Cook for 3-5 minutes, then add all other ingredients and turn off the heat. Set aside.
For the topping: place the wheat berries in 2 cups water in a small saucepan with a pinch of salt over high heat with the lid on. Once boiling take down to a simmer and let cook 50 to 60 minutes. They will still be chewy and hold their shape. Drain the berries and set aside. While the wheat berries are cooking, place the canola oil in a fry pan and add the onion. Cook over medium heat for 3-5 minutes and the onion is translucent, then add the shredded carrot and yam. Cook, stirring frequently, for another 5 minutes. Turn off the heat, then mix in the wheat berries and sauce. Toast the bread and serve each person two slices of the toast topped with an 1/8 of the wheat berry topping, open-face style.

My camera either got seriously misplaced or stolen this weekend in Indy, so I apologize for the lack of pics, I would have loved to have shared snapshots of our delicious dinner with you!