Sloppy Shaun & more

These were Sloppy Seans.

J and I were thinking about what to eat on 4th of July. While I was checking hundreds of images of 4th of July dinner ideas online, mainly hotdogs, hamburgers and grilled stuffs, a picture caught my eye. I asked J, how about Sloppy Joes? His answer was positive. We adapted a recipe from Cook's Illustrated's slow cooker recipe book with a few major changes. One was skipping all Ketchup. Ketchup is J's enemy. To cover the vacancy of the Ketchup volume and flavor, we increased tomato sauce and added a few of tablespoons of white wine vinegar and some spices like ground mustard, clove, and allspice that I have seen in a homemade Ketchup recipe. The other change was mixing ground lamb. So, we used a pound of ground beef and a pound of ground lamb instead of two pounds of ground beef. During 4 hour slow cooking on high heat, I made red vinegar coleslaw and buns with J's help.

We steamed (microwaved) fresh corn on the cob, too! I LOVE corn!

J made herb butter for corn. Yum.

I think I had Sloppy Joes once before years ago. I don't remember how it was. I guess we made it with a commercial box seasoning and ate it with commercial buns at that time. This was my second Sloppy Joes and pretty tasty! Wait. Sloppy Joes made with ground turkey (or chicken?) is apparently called Sloppy Janes. Ours were half beef and half lamb. Joes wouldn't suit the case. "Shaun," J named it. Aha! That sounded appropriate. It stems from one of our favorite movies, A Close Shave.