By June is here and summer in Antioch has settled into its rhythm: early mornings (Jayden is an alarm clock set to 5:30 AM and there is no snooze), breakfast chaos, Mama takes the kids, I work the Waffle House shift, home by 3, kids until bedtime, study until I can't keep my eyes open. The rhythm is familiar now, worn smooth like a path through grass. I know every step.
Chloe lost another tooth — her third. She's becoming an expert at the extraction process: wiggle for days, show everyone (including strangers at Kroger), wiggle more, and then yank it out at dinner with a sound that makes me want to leave my own body. The tooth fairy left a dollar. Chloe's tooth fairy savings are now $3. She's planning to buy a book at the library book sale. She is five years old and her financial strategy is already better than mine was at twenty-five.
Jayden's vocabulary is exploding. He says new words every day — "truck," "doggy," "more," "outside," "gross" (he learned that one from Chloe), and my personal favorite, "booty," which he shouts at random intervals for no reason. He yelled it at Mama's apartment on Tuesday and she said, "That child gets that from your side of the family." Which side, Mama? The Mitchell side? Because I seem to recall Danny Mitchell being a man who had a vocabulary that would make a sailor blush, and where do you think I got it from?
I'm using the summer to prep for my last semester. I outlined every class I'll take in the fall: advanced clinical practice, community health, and board exam review. I also reached out to Dr. Whitfield about the peer tutoring position. She confirmed: I'll be tutoring first-year students starting in September. I'll be the person someone looks at and thinks, "She knows what she's doing." I hope they're right. I hope I look like I know what I'm doing, even if inside I'm still the girl who wrote "dental hygiene" on a guest check at the Waffle House and hoped it was enough.
I made a big pot of sloppy joes this week. Ground beef, onion, ketchup, brown sugar, mustard, Worcestershire sauce, all simmered together and served on buns. It's the food of summer weeknights — easy, cheap, the kind of thing kids will eat without negotiation. Chloe ate hers like a civilized human. Jayden ate his with both hands and most of it ended up on his shirt, which now has a permanent orange stain in the shape of what Chloe says is "a dinosaur" but is actually just chaos. I threw the shirt away. Some stains are beyond salvation. Some stains are just the cost of feeding a two-year-old something with ketchup in it.
The sloppy joe I described up there — the one that permanently decorated Jayden’s shirt in what Chloe swears was a dinosaur — is a recipe I’ve been making on autopilot for years, but this slow cooker Mississippi version is the upgrade I didn’t know I needed until I tried it. On a shift day, when I’m home by three and running on Waffle House coffee and determination, the last thing I want to do is stand over a stove; I want to dump everything in a pot, study for an hour, and come back to dinner already done. This one does exactly that, and the tangy pepperoncini kick makes it just interesting enough that I feel like I cooked something — not just survived.
Slow Cooker Mississippi Sloppy Joes
Prep Time: 10 minutes | Cook Time: 4 hours (low) | Total Time: 4 hours 10 minutes | Servings: 6
Ingredients
- 1 1/2 lbs ground beef (80/20)
- 1 small yellow onion, finely diced
- 3 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 packet (1 oz) dry ranch seasoning mix
- 1 packet (1 oz) dry au jus gravy mix
- 1/2 cup pepperoncini peppers, sliced (plus 2 tablespoons of the brine)
- 4 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into pats
- 1/2 cup ketchup
- 1 tablespoon brown sugar
- 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
- 1 teaspoon yellow mustard
- 6 hamburger buns, toasted if desired
Instructions
- Brown the beef. In a large skillet over medium-high heat, cook the ground beef and diced onion together, breaking the meat apart as it cooks, until no pink remains, about 7–8 minutes. Drain excess fat. Add the garlic and cook for 1 minute more.
- Transfer to slow cooker. Spoon the browned beef mixture into the insert of a 4- to 6-quart slow cooker.
- Add the Mississippi magic. Sprinkle the ranch seasoning and au jus packets evenly over the beef. Add the sliced pepperoncini, the brine, ketchup, brown sugar, Worcestershire sauce, and mustard. Lay the butter pats on top.
- Cook low and slow. Cover and cook on LOW for 3 1/2 to 4 hours, or on HIGH for 1 1/2 to 2 hours. Stir everything together about halfway through if you’re around.
- Stir and taste. When done, stir well to combine all the melted butter and juices into the meat. Taste and adjust — add a pinch of salt, a splash more brine for tang, or a little more brown sugar if you want it sweeter.
- Serve. Pile generously onto buns. Accept that at least one shirt at the table will not survive. That’s the cost of a good sloppy joe.
Nutrition (per serving)
Calories: 430 | Protein: 24g | Fat: 20g | Carbs: 38g | Fiber: 1g | Sodium: 980mg