My sister recently returned from a year in Marshall Islands working with World Teach. Before that she lived in Alaska for several yearss. With all this traveling, she hasn’t been in the area much, so it goes without saying that our mother was quite ecstatic about her arrival. But she’s not in town long. In a matter of days she’s off to Chicago to prepare for graduate school. Because of this and Father’s day, I decided to spend the weekend in Richmond seeing family and catching up.

I’ve been trying to spend more time experimenting with different varieties of vegetarian dinners; those outside my traditional niche of soup, salads and roasted vegetables. I’ve never done much with the faux meats (tofu, tempeh, seitan), but hey, gotta broaden those horizons. I wanted to start with something that reminded me of what I use to eat when as a kid (this is Edwin’s family post).

When I was growing up, there were certain meals we’d always have. Mondays were spaghetti night, Fridays were pizza night (and TGIF!) and not every week, but pretty often there’d be sloppy joes night. I loved sloppy joes night. We never had it with hamburger buns. We always ate it with regular sandwich bread and french fries on the side. So. Good.

So here’s my attempt at replicating that old classic with tempeh and NO can of manwich. Will it fool anyone into thinking it’s the real deal? No. Is it good? Definitely.