Sloppy Sams Recipe

I've mentioned "Sloppy Sams" (a.k.a vegan sloppy joes) numerous times on this blog, but I've never actually devoted a post to the recipe for them!

I originally got my inspiration for Sloppy Sams from Recipes for a Small Planet, one of the first vegetarian cookbooks I'd ever owned. (In case you didn't know, I was a vegetarian for about 12 yrs - from 1993-2005, and when I started out I had NO idea what vegetarians ate. I just ate dairy. But after a while, I knew I had to expand. That's when Recipes for a Small Planet and The New Enchanted Broccoli Forest entered my life - and changed it forever!)

Over time, I've adapted the old sloppy sams recipe to fit my family's preferences better.

Here's my recipe:

Sloppy Sams

olive oil
1 small onion, diced
1-2 celery stalks, diced
1 small summer squash, diced or shredded (this can be omitted or replaced with any vegetable you like)
1-2 red/orange/yellow peppers, diced or chopped coarsely
4 cloves garlic
500g red lentils, sorted and rinsed
4 (or so) cups water
300g tomato paste
1/8 cup maple syrup or sugar, or more or less, depends how sweet you want it!
apple cider vinegar, to taste
pinch of cinnamon
salt, pepper, to taste

Heat olive oil in a saucepan over medium heat. Add onion and vegetables, stirring occasionally. Add garlic after a few minutes. Continue to cook, stirring occasionally, till everything just begins to brown. Add water to pot, then add lentils. Stir well, and raise the heat. Bring mixture to a boil, then lower the heat to simmer for 10 min or so (until the lentils soften). Add water as needed. When the lentils are soft and the mixture is still liquidy, add tomato paste, maple syrup/sugar, vinegar, and seasonings. Mix well. Simmer for another 5 minutes or so. Serve warm on rolls or in pitot.

This recipe is really versatile, you can leave out or replace vegetables with others you prefer. You can add shredded carrots and omit the summer squash. You can leave out the peppers if you don't like them... the possibilities are endless. Enjoy!

Update: I started eating the leftovers, cold, as a dip with crackers or tortilla chips, and it's a big hit!

Let me know if you decide to make my Sloppy Sams for your family!

Lentil and Vegetable Sloppy Sams

Tonight's supper started out early, with really good intentions.

I mixed up some bread dough WAY earlier in the day, so I could make fresh bread for supper.

And then, I got distracted. I forgot about supper and decided to try to make chocolate chip mandelbread without eggs.

The mandel bread worked out JUST FINE. Actually, more than just fine. Really yummy!

Funny thing, people still thought we should have supper!

So I threw that bread dough into the oven as dinner rolls, and then quickly made sloppy sams.

Sloppy Sams (Lentil and Vegetable)
1 onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, chopped
2 carrots, diced
1 small red pepper, diced (use green, they are cheaper, I just had one in the house for some reason)
any other vegetables you want to use up, diced.
Cook veggies in a large skillet in olive oil, till onions are browned.
Add 2 c red lentils (sorted and rinsed)
tomato paste, water, and spices/seasonings of your choice (I repurposed some leftover sweet and sour sauce from earlier in the week, and added some cayenne pepper)
More water
Simmer it all together till the lentils are all soft. You will likely need to add some more water while it's cooking, unless you have a really huge pan to begin with...

Serve on dinner rolls, and ENJOY!

We're having some melon to go with this, too.

Monday, January 9, 2012

I really got sidetracked today and my supper planning suffered for it.

Remember that bread recipe I posted? I ended up making a couple of loaves of bread and a whole bunch of Pull-Apart Dinner Rolls. Who can resist pull-apart rolls?!

So...

Whole wheat oatmeal flaxseed Pull-apart rolls with vegetarian sloppy joes (made with red lentils)

Fruit


That's as far as I got, but I suspect it will be ok...

Tuesday, July 5, 2011

I decided that not going to the supermarket is good in so many ways - I don't lose hours in the checkout line, my kids don't lobby me to buy ice cream and popsicles and chocolate, so I don't have to listen to all that whining, and I don't spend $ on gas (and everyone knows that is a huge budget buster here! Recently, one of the gas stations here lowered their price to under 7 NIS per liter, and I was so happy. Until I realized I must be crazy. It's still a TON of money.).

So, I'm trying really hard to stick to the pantry challenge.

Here's tonight's plan:

Tofu sloppy sams with pitot

Steamed kishuim (summer squash similar to zucchini)

Homemade oven-baked "french fries"

Melon

And now I'm off to spend the day with my kids!
Let me know what you're making, and if you're doing a pantry challenge, let me know how it's going!

Sunday, June 12, 2011

Here's an "after-the-fact" post. (It's late already!)

Tonight's supper:

Fruit & Yogurt smoothies

Sloppy Sams with Pitot

Cucumbers and Pickles

Somehow,  this turned out to be enough. Goes to show that sometimes it's simpler to offer fewer choices...

Looking forward to a no-fuss week!

Monday Night, May 23, 2011

I hope everyone had a great Lag Ba'omer! It's a fun holiday, but not so much fun for asthmatics. My inhaler got a lot of use, unfortunately...

But, Sunday is now over, and Monday is approaching. Time to plan!

Here's what's on our menu:

Sloppy Sams (tofu sloppy joes) with Pitot

Make your own salad (we have lettuce, purple cabbage, carrots, cucumbers, and whatever else I discover)

Watermelon

Keeping it simple - there's a lot going on here lately and every day is BUSY!

Monday Night, Feb. 28, 2011

I'm suffering from another round of cooking burnout. It's a lot to plan and prepare (and clean up after!) 3 healthy meals every day, plus snacks for a family of 6. I admit, most mornings we have hot or cold cereal, maybe some yogurt and fruit, so breakfast is not really so labor-intensive, but I'm kind of ready for someone else to cook (and clean!). Just one night. Please?

My 6 year old  has offered to cook, but I just can't take her up on it. Although now she thinks she is a master chef, since she made a fruit salad that everyone devoured!

That said, I still have to make supper...

On the way to the table on Monday night:

Sloppy Sams in Pitot
Make-your-own Salad  (lettuce, tomatoes, purple and green cabbage, cucumbers, and carrots)
Couscous (cooked in whatever is left of the vegetable soup from Shabbat)
 Roasted Zucchini, Tomato, and Onion

As long as the oven is already on, I will probably bake something else - but I'm not sure yet what. Whatever it is, it will have to be eggless, since I didn't buy any eggs yet this week! (Everybody ate the eggless cookies over Shabbat, so I'm guessing it'll work out ok!) What should I bake? (I'm thinking muffins or a breakfast bread...)

Sloppy Sams Follow Up

I was so happy last night when the sloppy sams were eaten without complaint! I think we're finally getting closer to a truly successful sloppy sam recipe!

Here's what I did:

(This recipe requires a small amount of advance preparation, but it is well worth it.)
The night before or in the morning, open and drain a package of firm tofu. Place on a towel lined plate, cover with another clean towel (or paper towel), and weigh it down. I used my cast iron fry pan to weigh it down, and it really drained a lot of liquid out of the tofu over the hour or so I drained it.

Once the tofu is well-drained, crumble it finely with a fork (in a bowl you can cover). I seasoned it with soy sauce, garlic powder, and onion powder. Cover the bowl and refrigerate till you're ready to throw the sloppy sams together.

Later, finely dice 1 medium onion, 2 cloves of garlic, and a sweet red pepper. Saute in olive oil over medium heat, preferably in a cast iron pan. When the onion is translucent and fragrant, add the tofu crumbles. Continue to cook, stirring frequently. Once the tofu browns somewhat, add tomato paste, water, sugar, vinegar, ground black pepper, and any other seasonings you like. Allow to cook over med-low heat till warmed through, stirring occasionally. I also added some oat bran toward the end, because I accidentally used too much water. This thickened it up really nicely, and even added fiber and nutrients to our meal.

Even my 6 year old daughter, who always claims not to eat Sloppy Sams, ate it all up!

Monday Night

Aside from the frugal aspect, I'm looking for easy meals. We usually have busy days, and since I homeschool my 4 kids, I really don't have much downtime...ever.

For Monday evening, I'm looking to incorporate leftovers into the plan (I've been trying harder not to have to throw those out. If you have tips to make sure that leftovers get used up, please share! My kids sometimes groan when they see a food served "AGAIN".).

I just took stock of the fridge, and while most of our Shabbat food actually got eaten (and the leftover barley went into the freezer), we have plenty of vegetable noodle soup left!

(By the way, I'm really big on soup right now. It's winter, and we live in a "warm" location in Israel, which means we have a poorly insulated house and not-so-efficient heaters. And it's raining - a good thing! In other words, sometimes it's colder inside our house than out, and I'm too frugal to heat the place all the time!)

So here's what we'll be eating (it's a vegan menu!):

Vegetable-Noodle Soup
Sloppy "Sams" in pitot
Steamed Cauliflower and Broccoli
Oven-crisp Roasted Potato Wedges
I rarely do dessert during the week, but maybe I'll even bake muffins! I have a few wrinkly apples to use up.

Some notes about these foods:

The soup is the same one from Friday night. I keep all my Shabbat soups pareve, so I can use them again during the beginning of the week.

Sloppy Sams are Vegetarian Sloppy Joes. I'm making these with drained and crumbled tofu (I buy these at Kimat Chinam; if you buy 3 tofu cubes at a time, they are 3/23.99 NIS. Does anyone have a better deal to share?), browned in olive oil with diced onion and peppers, cooked with tomato paste, water, and spices. We still haven't worked out the perfect combination of Sloppy Sam spices, so if you have any TNT recipes, please share!

Cauliflower and Broccoli - the cauliflower was on sale for 1 NIS/kilo, so we'll be going heavy on the cauliflower, light on the brocolli. The best price I found for broccoli was 8 NIS/kilo at Yesh. Kimat Chinam was 14 NIS/kilo and Rami Levy something like 17 NIS/kilo. My kids love broccoli, so I figured I would have to continue to buy it and stretch it with the cauliflower...

For the Potato Wedges, I usually combine olive oil, mustard, garlic, salt, and pepper. Mix well with potato wedges (just scrub and cut - leave those peels on so you get the vitamins and trace minerals!), and bake in the oven at 400 F till crispy and turning brown. The kids like to eat them with ketchup...