Lots and lots of years ago, way back when I was a lass, our family on my Mom's side would gather in summer for barbeque's at Grandma and Grandpa's house. A family gathering for a family with 9 children, their spouses and the grand kids, plus a few friends that were regulars, made for a well populated party!
Their house was a grand Victorian over 100 years old that sat on a large parcel of land, the backyard was a perfect setting for such a gathering.
Mismatched metal chairs filled with aunts and uncles dotted the lawn, and the sound of clanging horseshoes mingled with the smell of smoke rising from the grilling bar-b-q ribs, were the trademark. Grandma was a kitchen genius and always had a variety of summer salads to choose from, Waldorf (still a personal favorite!), 3 bean, old fashioned potato salad, cole slaw, there was certainly no reason to leave hungry!
Ribs were not the delicacy then that they have become now. They were relatively inexpensive which is partly why (the other part, they're delicious) they were the grilling food of choice for such a large number of people.
For some occasions it really is just necessary to serve ribs, it is the only acceptable option, like on the 4Th of July, but now-a-days ribs break the bank and are a treat reserved for rare celebrations.
Sloppy Joe's are for my kids, what ribs were for me as a kid. It became the food of choice when appetites grew with the size of us and the expanding guest lists. It really began out of necessity, as the most cost efficient way for me to have plenty to feed everyone and like my Grandma, send no-one away hungry. Interestingly it has become the food of choice especially for birthdays, we have all come to associate a family gathering with sloppy Joe's, like it or not, that's what's on the menu!
We fancy it up a bit with deviled eggs or as G-ma and G-pa like to call them "angel eggs", black olives always a staple for finger adornment and for the across the room to a mouth open wide toss, veggies, cheeses, Wickles Pickles hors d'oeuvres (a recent addition), chocolate cake or rice krispy treats on lucky days, chips and pop.
We decided to mix things up recently and changed the menu to another childhood family favorite, homemade sliders, shakes and fries. That day the power failed, the fries had to finish cooking on the grill, the rolls flopped because the oven was goofed up in the power blip which resulted in a dash to the store for ready mades, lunch that was planned for 2:00 happened at 5:00 and we sweltered in the unusually high temps of 90 something! I'm not suggesting these odd phenoms occurred because we dared change the traditional family gathering sloppy Joe menu, just that it is indeed odd. All of the mishaps that resulted from that particular days power malfunction actually made the whole get together even better than we'd planned since we had to improvise and the improvision was memorable!
In the grand scheme of things the menu is the least of it. Time spent in good company growing relationships and making moments that will last in our memories is the far better purpose.
I suspect in the days ahead as the grand kids grow and the family morphs into one that looks different than it does right now, when we think about how birthdays and family gatherings used to be, there will be the fond recollection of the slider mishap and large pots of sloppy Joe. I'm not sure we'll try the sliders again, that's a lot of burger assembly, fry frying and shake shaking, but the sloppy's are probably here for a good long run yet.
If we bump into you as we ready for a gathering you'll get an invite, we love extras, you can probably expect sloppy's on the menu because there's always room and food enough for friends, nothing fancy just a family tradition. Who knows, maybe like ribs sloppy joe's will one day be a delicacy reserved for only the most special occasions, but then we already knew that!
Here's to gathering at the crockpot!
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