Tonight’s Menu – Sloppy Jose’s for Wrestlers

What’s on the Hectic Kitchen table tonight?

Weather and sports in Kansas make for an exciting combination. The combination is difficult in lots of parts of the country, but it’s especially true in Kansas where we really have very little to slow down weather patterns and storms. With winds regularly in the 40-50mph range, we have lots and lots of cancelled, postponed, and rescheduled events. The middle of December was no exception, and the final wrestling tournament of the calendar year (about 1/3 of the way through the season) was called off for our varsity wrestlers that was to be held in Emporia, KS (about l.5 hours away in good weather). Our junior varsity still went to their separate tournament, but lots of teams left that one early due to the deteriorating weather conditions.

In an impressive display of scheduling voodoo, our wrestling coach pulled together a tournament to be hosted here at our local high school. The huge advantage is that I don’t have to get on the road at 6:30 in the morning to watch both my sons wrestle. The disadvantage, the home team provides food for our wrestlers as well as the hospitality room for the coaches, workers, and officials. This is going to be a fairly large tournament, so we’re pulling together the hospitality food with very short and fewer helpers than we would usually have.

If you know anything about wrestling, you know that those athletes watch their food consumption carefully, and many of them work very hard to maintain their weight so they can wrestle in the optimal weight class. That means foregoing junk food, limiting what they eat, and strictly controlling their fluid intake. Weigh-ins occur the morning of a meet, and once weigh-in is completed, wrestlers are hungry. Well honestly, ravenous is a more accurate term. So the food that we make available to our athletes has to be filling, provide lots of energy (wrestling is a really intense physical sport), and have taste. Lots and lots of taste. When you don’t get to eat a lot, the more taste the food has the better you feel about eating the smaller-than-normal portions.

So, while it would be reasonable to provide moderately flavored Sloppy Joes to these teenagers, I developed a much more flavorful version we call Hectic Sloppy Joses. The onions, peppers, (sometimes) jalapenos, and other South-of-the-border flavorings make for a nice change from the normal fare. Fortunately, the Progressive Fruit & Vegetable chopper had already gone through the dishwasher, so it was pressed back into service. Chopping four bell pepper and five medium onions went by in nothing flat. I’m going to be raving about this gadget for a while!

Since I’ll be at the wrestling tournament most of the day, the cooking happened the night before. Then I set aside a portion for the family to eat at the Hectic Household when we get done with the tournament.

To complement the Hectic Sloppy Joses, we’ll have the usual array of buns, cubed cheese, and odd sauces (mustard, ketchup, BBQ, and even Ranch Dressing). I usually have rice at home too, since that’s one of the foods that the wrestlers will eat after a tournament. I stick with Instant Rice, sometimes Instant Brown Rice. The point of the rice and cheese and sauces it actually to tone done the flavor a little bit. Not too much, but some. We do lean towards whole-grain buns when possible. Sometimes I’ll just buy (or occasionally make) a loaf of bread. Then we eat the Joses more like chili, in a bowl, and just dip the bread and cheese into the bowl.

We’ll also have a Hectic Vegetable Tray available to help fill everybody up. There will be Ranch and Caesar dressing for dipping. If I get around to it, I’ll also make our Hectic Vegetable Onion Dip.

My older son is very disciplined in his eating, so we won’t have any new sweets for dessert. He’s been eating a lot of yogurt lately, especially Greek Vanilla-flavored Yogurt. We’ll combine that with some granola and fruit for a parfait. We’ve dubbed one variation the Hectic Greek Yogurt Parfait…you can imagine how long it took to come up with that catchy name, eh? I’ll probably join him in the parfait for dessert, but the rest of the family will have ice cream sundaes. If the sundaes don’t happen there are still leftover desserts from our later Christmas celebration, so they’ll likely indulge in them.