Ground beef has a many great uses. Two favourites are hamburgers or cheeseburgers and tomato sauce. We belong to a local food buying clubr and organic beef from organically raised Black Angus cattle is one item we buy. The order arrived the other day and as it was a Saturday night I thought we should have our usual relaxed Saturday night dinner, often burgers, hot dogs or chili.

This week I wanted somethingn slightly different but still simple. My wife had mentioned sloppy joes the other day and our numerous years together have shown me when she mentions, something preparing it is always a good idea. So I took out my recipe file and flipped to the sloppy joes.

Bob’s Spicy Sloppy Joes;

Ingredients:

1- 1 lb organic ground beef, now you do not have to use organic but the taste is so worth it.

2- 7 oz or ½ 14 oz can spicy red pepper tomato sauce

3- ½ red bell pepper diced

4- 1 medium onion diced

5- 1 jalapeno pepper sliced

6- 1 celery stalk sliced fine

7- Crushed chilies and black pepper to taste (optional)

8- tbsp olive oil

Preparation:

1- put black cast iron frying pan on stove medium heat, add oil

2- add onions, celery stalks stir and cook 2 minutes

3- add red bell pepper stir

4- add ground beef, stir

5- cook until brown throughout

6- add jalapeno peppers

7- add tomatoes

8- cook 5 minutes, stir

9- Pour over Kaisers or hamburger buns; I use a good 7 grain bed sometimes.

10- Add balck pepper, crushed chilies if desired.

This meal can be prepared quickly and goes great with a cold beer or a glass of ice water. Last night we had fresh local blueberries and French vanilla yogurt for desert, a great combination and ideal compliment to the meal.

If you do not want to spend the extra money on the organic beef, but if you can it is well worth it, use a lean or extra lean ground beef.

I find the difference in price between extra lean beef and organic beef which is quite lean and ahs very little fat so meat is not greasy, to be marginal when you are only using a pound. We buy the organic beef prepackaged and frozen in pound size packs. This makes for easy storing and use.

These sloppy joes are spicy not burning your tongue off but spicy enough to get a little sweat going so having something cool to drink handy.