Lord of the Flies Meets Backyard BBQ--Tales from Inverness Court
And a New, Feminist Take on the Old Sloppy Joe
The neighborhood we lived in when I was growing up was called King’s Chapel. The roads that wove through it had names like New Castle, Aberdeen, St. Andrews, and, the street we lived on, Inverness Court. But despite its allusion to royalty, our neighborhood was comprised of small lots adorned with modest brick ranchers that occasionally boasted a two-car garage. King’s Chapel was on the outskirts of Troy, Ohio, carved out of old cornfields whose remnants created the borders of our neighborhood and the setting for most of my favorite childhood memories.
It was in these fields surrounding our neighborhood that my brothers built forts to hide behind during their dirt-clod battles with the boys from the other streets. As the sisters of the warriors, my friends and I hid in the mulberry trees on the edge of the field, sitting in the creviced seats the branches provided, and ate the tart fruit while war ensued below us, occasionally yelling warnings of an incoming threat to our entrenched brothers. It was better than anything we could watch on the zigzagging screens of our televisions at home. So, we waited till the last moments of daylight lingered and the streetlights buzzed to life before we ran home, the adrenaline of war pulsing through our arms and legs.
But it wasn’t always grenade throwing and hand-to-hand combat. There were canoe rides through our street when the sewers backed up and created a veritable Ganges River down Inverness Court. And the bike races that once landed my brother in the hospital with stitches after he wrapped his ten-speed around a telephone pole in an effort to beat out the competition. We had lemonade stands where my friends and I ate all the inventory while playing hopscotch on the sidewalk, waiting for the drive-by customers who never came, not knowing that living in a cul-de-sac doomed our enterprise from the beginning.
And while we children fought battles and raced bikes and failed as entrepreneurs, there were parents in the background, going to work, paying bills, doing laundry, cooking dinner. But it seemed that our lives so rarely crossed over. Aside from dinner times, bedtimes, and bath times, my brothers and I spent every waking hour with our neighborhood friends while our parents did, well, whatever parents did.
With one exception.
Every couple of months or so, the parents would plan a neighborhood gathering, either in the backyard of one house or in the garage of another, depending on the weather. They’d carry picnic tables from one yard to the next, then fill them with all the necessary makings of a good midwestern get-together: sloppy joes, hot dogs, baked beans, potato chips, onion dip, mustard potato salad, plastic jugs of grape Kool-aid for the kiddos to pour out into tupperware cups, and a cooler packed full of beers for the adults.
This is where we got a sneak peek of what parents did for fun. And it wasn’t all that exciting. They usually just sat in their plastic lawn chairs and talked while we galloped around them like wild mustangs till they shooed us away. Occasionally, they might join in a game of football or toss a baseball back and forth. And once, during a Halloween when too much alcohol had been imbibed, a couple of the dads attempted to add a little fright to a pumpkin carving gathering in our garage and broke straight through the glass windows in their scary masks, erupting the whole party into a melee of horrified screams and weeping, bringing the gathering to an abrupt end.
Of course later when I was older, I’d learn about all the parental drama that took place away from the listening ears and curious eyes of us children. The feuds that culminated in shouting matches over fences, the affairs that simmered behind closed curtains, the husbands that walked out, the wives who didn’t, the spouses who should have. It was a novel in the making, and perhaps one day I’ll get around to writing it.
But for me, Inverness Court was a strange sort of paradise. It was tussle and blood and victory and friendship played out on a black-topped street surrounded by a dozen unassuming houses. It was the sound of “Come out and play!” called from the sidewalk. The pinpricked feeling of bare feet on stiff grass. The cacophony of smells as dinner cooked in every kitchen on the block, and the sweet, tangy taste of sloppy joe rolling over my tongue, the brown sauce sliding down my sunburnt arms, and landing on the splintered wood of the picnic table beneath me.
It was—in short—the glory of being a kid.
A few years ago, we moved into a neighborhood that reminds me a lot of my childhood one. While the kids don’t spend every waking hour outdoors with their friends like I did, they spend enough for me to know that this move was the right one. And while we have yet to organize the neighborhood gatherings that my parents and their friends did so often, we’re getting there.
Or should I say, my sloppy joe recipe is getting there, and that’s the true starting point, isn’t it?
Since I don’t eat meat anymore, I’ve had to get creative. I tried the standard ketchup based options with meatless stand-ins, but it felt like I was reaching for something that I could never quite wrap my fingers around. I was wanting to recreate my childhood memory, but I think, maybe, it’s best to leave it there.
So I’ve come up with my own rendition that has some updated flavors…and attitude—who ever said that serious sandwiches always required masculine descriptors? Manwich, Sloppy Joes…
As if.
Time to bring SJ into the new millennium. (Scroll down for the recipe!)
Red Curry Lentil Sandwiches aka Mai’s “Thai-dy Josephines”
I confess that this recipe didn’t actually start out as a Sloppy Joe substitute. I’d given up on the SJ Replacement Project a while ago. But I had managed to make one of my favorite meaty recipes from J M Hirsch’s cookbook High Flavor, Low Labor into a vegan friendly version of Thai-inspired Red Curry Lentils.
How it morphed into my new favorite sandwich was purely accidental.
One afternoon I reached for leftovers of the lentils but realized I’d run out of rice to eat them over. And then the idea hit me. Put these babies on a bun and see what happens. What happened was Sloppy Joes got relegated to a childhood memory, and Thai-dy (get it, “tidy”—clever, I know) Josephines took its place. Best of all, friends, this dish has the “Stove to Table in 30” stamp of approval. Time to get cooking!
Ingredients:
8 oz. baby bella or white button mushrooms, finely chopped
3 c. cooked lentils or 2, 14oz. cans lentils, rinsed and drained
3 tbsp. red curry paste
3 tbsp. tamari (you can use soy sauce here in you’re in a pinch)
3 tbsp. sugar
5 oz. baby spinach, chopped
2 green onions, sliced
1 tsp. dried basil
1/2 c. canned coconut milk
1 lime, zested and juiced
sandwich rolls and greens, for serving
Heat large frying pan over medium heat, add a tablespoon or two of water or veggie broth, and toss in the mushrooms. Cook for 3 or 4 minutes, until shrooms start to release their liquid, and then add the lentils. Stir together and push to the side of the pan to make a small, empty space to add the sauce ingredients: the curry paste, tamari, and sugar. Stir the sauce ingredients together and let the flavors meld for about 30 seconds and then mix the sauce in with the lentils and mushrooms.
By now your kitchen smells fabulous and your mouth is watering, and guess what— you’re almost done. Just sprinkle in the chopped spinach, green onions, and basil, and cook till the spinach has wilted down, another 3-4 minutes. Add in the coconut milk, lime juice and zest, stir around, and simmer for another minute or so till the consistency gives you Sloppy Joe vibes. Remove from heat, assemble your Josephines on a roll with (or without) greens, maybe add a side of sweet potato fries because “why not?”, and then get ready to fall in love.
Makes 6 hearty sandwiches.
Love your writing, Maile. Always fun.
Those were the days! lol