Sloppy Joes with Hidden Zucchini

Here's an easy recipe for ya that will use up your zucchini and get your kids eating their veggies, and they won't even know it!

Here is what you need:

• 1 medium zucchini
• sloppy joe mix, or made-from-scratch
• 1 lb. ground beef
• grated cheese, to taste
• 8 slices of bread
• mustard, to taste

Here is what you do:

• Brown the ground beef.
• While beef is cooking, grate the zucchini.
• Add sloppy joe mix to cooked beef.
• Reduce heat to low simmer and add grated zucchini. Simmer for 3 or 4 more minutes.
• Toast the bread.
• Top toast with cheese, sloppy joe mix, and mustard.

Toasting the bread helps it stand up to the sauce a bit more. And, if you put the cheese on the hot toast and then cover it with the hot sloppy joe sauce, it will melt the cheese perfectly!

I'm not sure where the cheese and mustard thing came from, but I love it! If you don't, then feel free to leave it off.

This also holds up well in the freezer if you want to make it ahead and save it for later.

Green Thumb?

Well, let's not get too crazy. I had an opportunity to have a free garden plot at work and jumped at the chance. The catch? I had to do everything myself except water it. Yuck. I hate dirt and bugs, but I was excited to have zucchini!

Here are pics of my garden and the first "fruits" of my labor. :-)

Can you spot the garden through the weeds? 

(They didn't weed around the garden, and I wasn't about to. 

It's enough work to weed the actual garden itself!)

I planted tomatoes, zucchini, cucumbers, onions, broccoli, and brussel sprouts. But, only the zucchini and cucumber are producing anything edible. That's OK, though, because I mainly wanted zucchini.

YAY!!! Zucchini plants!

Flowers = things are happening successfully!

Here are the 5 zucchini, 1 cucumber, and about 10 teeny onions.

And here they are all prettied!


So, get ready for some zucchini recipes...