sloppy joes for dinner

I completely went off of menu rotation...chicken carbonara was on board to be tonight's dinner and I just was not feeling it...
and I like sloppy joes, I don't love them but for some reason for a couple of days, I had been thinking of them (sort of like craving, I guess...)  and everyone in the family does love them...

I have said before that I was the second oldest to 12 kids from a very poor family...we ate a lot of oatmeal and to this day, I cannot stand it...there were also many nights we went to bed without dinner...my mother tried, I have to give her credit...she did not have a lot to work with especially with so many kids...but I do not really think I got my love of food from her...she cooked with a purpose, to feed 12 kids with no resources (to speak of)...it had to have been very hard on her...she was a wonderful baker when she could however...great cinnamon rolls, cookies and angel food cakes from scratch with coffee flavored icing...I am sure with more ingredients on hand, I feel that she would have been able to do great things...
when I got married, I wanted to do everything right...(well right for me and my new hubby)...but new hubby had a mind of his own and was very opinionated on what he liked to eat...and he came from a family (Italian) that loved their lasagna, etc. but they were very big on meat and potatoes.., and that is not what I was used to...I wanted to branch out, I had not even had bacon or pork chops or steak or things like that until I moved away from home...I was used to casseroles and mac n cheese...and I wanted to expand those casseroles that I was brought up on and make them better...he wanted nothing to do with them...
enter,,,kids...and I made the things I loved for them and me and if hubby wanted to eat, he had to eat with us and he learned to like some of them too...

reason for posting this today...old habits die hard...when the kids were little, I was so determined to make good healthy meals for them and I was into the whole color thing too, where I matched foods that seemed to compliment each other and those menus have stuck with me...such as dinner tonight...do not think I could ever imagine sloppy joes without tator tots and green beans...and yet it is one of my family's favorite meals...

tonight:

sloppy joes
tator tots
green beans
jiffy corn casserole

there is not really a secret to sloppy joes...I make with McCormick's seasoning mix...I have thought many times of making my own...but when this one is so easy, why make myself do more work?

yummy