Sloppy Joes and Baked Onion Rings

Tuesday, December 3

Sloppy Joes and Baked Onion Rings

Rating: 4.25

This is one of our favorite dinners, and one of the few Seth requests regularly. Right before we first went vegan, I went to the bookstore – yes, an actual bookstore – to buy a vegan cookbook or two so I could figure out what the hell vegans actually ate. Even after 14 years as a vegetarian, “vegan” still seemed, well, weird. My logical mind knew it wasn’t, and that we actually ate vegan more of the time than not, at least for breakfast and lunch, but dinners for me still involved cheese and stuff, and the only things I was looking for on labels were things like gelatin and chicken broth. Anyway, after a visit to a bookstore (one of my favorite-est places on Earth), I was a proud owner of The Vegan Table. The book remains one of my most loved, and most battered, books. This was one of the first recipes we tried and it was, pardon the horrible pun, love at first bite. It’s such a simple recipe, so it’s perfect for a weeknight dinner, and it’s so tasty you’ll want to make it over and over again. Plus, depending how hot you like to make yours, it’s really kid-friendly. Or at least I think it would be, since we don’t have any kids. The base for these Joes is tempeh, and we make a half batch since there are just two of us. I don’t cook a lot with tempeh, so I just pop the other half of the package in the freezer for the next time. Sometimes we make potato wedges or fries with these, but this time Seth asked for baked onion rings. I have two recipes for these and I love them both. The one I made this time is from Appetite for Reduction. Again, an easy recipe, but since you have to bread the rings, it takes a minute. I tweak the recipe differently every time I make it. This time I added some Cajun seasoning and garlic powder to the rings. I made them first and while they baked, I made the sloppy joes. I could have cooked them for a few more minutes, but they were still really good. We had some steamed broccoli, too, just to have a green veggie on the plate.