I’ve always felt like there’s two types of sloppy joe camps: The Manwiches vs. The Ketchup and Mustards. Growing up, we were a ketchup and mustard family. We were poor and my mother worked nights, so there was nothing cheaper or quicker than browning some ground beef, squeezing in globs of ketchup and mustard, scooping it up between two pieces of Rotella’s bread, and calling it dinner.
Sloppy Joes left my life for the first few years after going vegetarian. I was 20 when I made the switch. During those formative years, I veered away from everything I’d ever known about food, wanting to experience food in a different way. I got adventurous and ate something new every night.
Fast forward 12 years later, and sometimes (ok, a lot) I crave simpler times, fast dinners, and a little nostalgia. Welcome back into my life, Ketchup and Mustard Sloppy Joes.
There really is no recipe for this. You brown an onion, throw in a bag of Morningstar Farms crumbles, heat through, add plain ketchup and mustard to taste, and eat. I feel like I’m 8 years old again when I serve this up for dinner. Some nights, that’s exactly what you need.
The Portly Vegetarian 