Day Four: The not-so-humble sloppy Joe. 

The inspiration for this quick and simple dinner was taken from an episode of Top Chef Masters in which chef Rick Moonen paid homage to Homer Simpson with a shrimp “sloppy d’oh.” We made these long ago according to the recipe and they are delicious. We’ve since simplified things and now this is a go-to dinner on the fly.

We’d just rolled in from our out-of-town road trip, K had a soccer game to get to and we were both tired from a long weekend of travel and events. We always keep a bag of raw shrimp in the freezer. We happen to have on hand a bottle of barbecue sauce homemade by my grandmother (who asked us to decide if it could be awarded “gourmet” status). We had two Ciabatta rolls. Clean and cut up the shrimp, saute briefly, add barbecue sauce, toast bun, assemble, eat.

It’s like classic barbecue and sloppy joe’s got together and had some fancy pants offspring. And it takes less than 15 minutes to make. Fast and tasty, that sounds like inspiration to me.