Good and Quick: Snobby Joes & Cole Slaw

I had so much success with Isa Moskowitz's French toast recipe this weekend, I was inspired to try another one of her recipes, this time out of the vegan recipe bible, otherwise known as Veganomicon: The Ultimate Vegan Cookbook. We wanted something good & quick, and kind of comforty. This recipe for Snobby Joes (they're snobby because they know they're better than all the others, because they don't have any meat) caught my eye because I knew I had a bag of dried lentils in the pantry. I also liked that it was bean-based instead of using some faux-ground beef or something similar. Believe me, I love the mock meats, but I know that they're not the healthiest things in the world to eat.

These were super easy to make, but you need to allow about 20 minutes for the lentils to cook. I boiled one cup of lentils in four cups of water. While the lentils are cooking, you saute one onion with a couple cloves of garlic and one bell pepper. (I wanted a green one, but my sucky grocery store was all out of them. I had to get a yellow one. Have you ever heard of a grocery store running out of green peppers?)

Then you add the drained, cooked lentils and mix in some chile powder, oregano, then an 8 oz. can of tomato sauce and 1/4 cup tomato paste. You cook this together for about 10 minutes.

After that cooks, you add 2-3 Tbsp. of maple syrup and one Tbsp. of yellow mustard. I tasted the mixture before adding the syrup and mustard, and it was good, but after adding them, it tasted really amazing. Syrup and mustard, man, they really do the trick.

These made me totally nostalgic for the Sloppy Joes that my parents used to make, but unlike those Joes, these are actually good for you. They're mildly spicy, sweet, and tangy and I highly recommend serving them on some good squishy wheat buns. You need the squishy buns to hold it all in and to soak up the good sauce, although these aren't as saucy (i.e. sloppy) as the Sloppy Joes that you may be used to making. At any rate, get squishy buns, if only for the nostalgia factor.

I served with a scoop of homemade cole slaw. I don't really have a recipe for cole slaw, I mix it up differently every time depending on what I have on hand. This time I whisked some vegan mayo together with Annie's Horseradish Mustard, a couple Tbsp. of soy milk, apple cider vinegar, and dried dill, then tossed it all together with shredded cabbage and carrots. Sorry that's not a real recipe, but I think that cole slaw, like most salads, is better when improvised. Also good and improvised: a little of the cole slaw on top of the Snobby Joe mixture - it was like a good BBQ sammich. Did I just say "sammich"? Please punch me if I start saying "Yum-O!"