Tomato Week: BL(A)T Sandwich

Last day of 'tomato week' - hope you've enjoyed a few different ways to use up too many tomatoes! I've found some new recipes in addition to my tried and true roasting method, especially the stuffed tomatoes and tomato tart,  I'll be making those again for sure...

I can't leave tomato week without mentioning the most classic of what-to-do with fresh-garden-giant-juicy-ripe just-picked gorgeous tomatoes -  Dave wished for it right from the beginning of my complaining about too many tomatoes - a bacon, lettuce, tomato sandwich. Not much I can say other than 'just about one of the best things ever'...unless you don't like bacon in which case I'm not talking to you - look away. Oh wait, I know, just eat an LT and it'll still be fabulous. You could even do a T sandwich - mayo and tomato with salt and pepper on lightly toasted bread, yep I'd love that too!

I cook the bacon in the microwave and it's waaaaay less messy - do you do that? Put a couple/three paper towels on a microwavable plate (or a big Chinet paper platter, then you can throw the entire thing out!), lay bacon slices (not touching, leave space between the slices) on the towels, cover with a couple more paper towels and micro on high. To do 8 thick slices at once I micro for 3 minutes, turn the slices on the towels, and continue microwaving in 30 second intervals until it's cooked thru.

The other thing I just did this week is spread ripe avocado on the toasted bread and use a bit less mayo - you don't really taste the avocado with everything else that's going on but it does add a nice creamy texture that we both really liked. Avocado is high in fat of course, but better for you than mayo!

Sloppy Joes From Scratch

My sis had a work function and signed up to bring sloppy joes - so guess what I made yesterday? Yep, since I'm her personal caterer/gopher/assistant/slave I made the sloppy joes for her. On the plus side it gave me a chance to experiment on people I don't know and make sloppy joes from scratch which I've never done before, and now I can blog them :) Win-win.

Hold on - I need a break in the post to tell you a backstory: she was originally supposed to bring a dish-to-pass and asked if I felt like making anything, she didn't care what. I remembered a recipe that a friend gave me years ago for Green Chile Frittata and I thought that'd be a great buffet thing for her to take to work, but I questioned the recipe because it says it takes 3 pounds of cheese! 3 pounds? Hmmm, I worried that wasn't right - can anything that fits in a 13x9 cake pan take 3 pounds of cheese? So a few days ago I made a tester run of the frittata and halved the amount of cheese just to see if that was going to taste right - and it does. It is a delicious casserole and I was confident about sending it into work with her. Then she tells me that she doesn't need the frittata anymore, she needs sloppy joes instead. Now you know the rest of the story.

Back to the sloppy's...Cathy told me once that they put grape jelly in their sloppy joe sauce - yep, you read that right, grape jelly! I don't have her recipe but I googled to see if anyone else makes it like that and there are lots of recipes to pick from...I know, weird - right? I combined a few recipes to come up with this one, and fortunately this sauce turned out so good (otherwise I planned to make a store run for Manwich!). I had Dave try it and he said it tasted just like his mom used to make, I take that as a big compliment (Shirl was a great cook!) and it's now a keeper recipe. I'm never using Manwich again, these are SO much better!

Pssst: don't tell my sissy but it's really easy to make homemade sloppy joes - I might have made it sound like I slaved away all day on it but it comes together very quickly ;)

I used 6 pounds of burger so needed a lot of sauce - I made 6 cups and used almost all of it - here is what I will do next time for a smaller batch (if you want 6 pounds worth just triple these amounts!).

Joes:

• 2 pounds ground beef
• 1/2 cup chopped onion
• garlic salt

Put the beef and onions in a large skillet and sprinkle with garlic salt, cook over medium heat until the meat is no longer pink. Drain it really well then wipe out the pan - greasy sloppy joes are gross. 

To make them sloppy: 

• 1 can condensed tomato soup, undiluted
• 1 cup ketchup
• 3 Tablespoons grape jelly
• 1 Tablespoon brown sugar
• 1 Tablespoon cider vinegar
• 2 teaspoons dijon mustard
• 2 teaspoons yellow mustard
• 1 teaspoon worcestershire sauce
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon celery seed

Mix the sauce ingredients together in a big bowl and taste it - I added a few more dashes of this and that to get it how I wanted. If you like it sweeter add more jelly or brown sugar, more tangy add additional vinegar or mustard. Play with it. Once it tastes good to you, add it to the drained ground beef and cook until it gets hot (or put it in a slow cooker on low for 4 hours). 

For Jen to take to work I put it in a big ziplock baggie (I had a little worry that the bag was going to break open it was so heavy!) and then she transferred the mixture to a crock pot once she got to work. Easier than trying to carry a full crockpot in from the car! 

PS: I'll post the frittata recipe soon - the sloppy joes were a hit but they have no idea how good the frittata was that they missed out on! :)


One year ago: s'more pie
Two years ago: mashed cauliflower