The recipe that almost broke my cooking spirit

So yes, that doozy of a recipe.  It was definitely an experiment, let me preface by saying that.  So the recipe was for vegan sloppy joe.  I wasn't necessarily interested in the vegan aspect of the recipe, but more the sloppy joe aspect.  I like a sloppy joe; Sam and I make it at least a few times a month with ground beef, and if I do say so, our recipe is very excellent.  And when I was a vegetarian, I always like the boxed sloppy joe mix made with soy proteins.  So I thought that sloppy joe made with lentils might be very delicious.  There was nothing in the recipe that was overtly vegan.  No weird substitutes, no odd ingredients at all.  Most items I had in my own pantry, in fact.

So okay, I thought the maple syrup was odd.  But I figured maple syrup might be just as good as brown sugar for flavoring.  And the yellow mustard seemed a little odd, but I figured that's just a substitute for the vinegar.  My own personal distaste for yellow mustard notwithstanding, I thought it might make sense.  Also, I wondered about the copious, heaping amount of chili powder (3 TBSPS!).  I've never had sloppy joes flavored with that before, but you know, I like chili, and I like tacos, so that didn't strike me as disgusting.  And then oregano, tomato sauce and tomato paste rounded out the recipe.  Oh, and onions and garlic and lentils, of course.

Let me categorically state that the lentils were NOT the problem.  I have half a pound left, and I intend to find some other way to eat them, because I LIKED the lentils.  I don't think the onion or garlic was the problem (they sure smelled good cooking), and even the chili powder itself wasn't the problem.  (Though I cut back on it.)  In fact, I'm pretty sure that the problem wasn't one single ingredient, but the bizarre way all these things smell and taste combined.  And that is:  like CURRY.  Like noxious, nauseating curry.

I, my friends, don't like curry.  I eat Indian food, but only the very mildest curries.  Any hint of a conventionally smelling curry, or a conventionally tasting curry, and I'm holding my hand over my mouth and trying very hard not to barf.  Once, Sam ordered a Thai curry to taste it, and the minute he popped the lid off, I ran to the window and stuck my head out.  The stuff just does NOT agree with me.

So okay, the vegan sloppy joe WASN'T a curry.  And as such, it wasn't quite as noxious.  I tried really, really hard to choke it down.  I had a HUGE pot of it on the stove, and it seemed like such a massive waste to toss it.  So I choked some down, stopped abruptly, and said to Sam desperately, "I can't eat this."  Then I made him throw the stuff away.  And clean the pot.  Because the smell was suddenly THAT bad.  And because he's an excellent boyfriend, he did it, and then he took me to Wiener's Circle for dinner.  I went from noxious fake vegan curry to a gorgeous grilled piece of tubular meat made up of who knows what.  And I was HAPPY.

I'm not saying I'm done experimenting, but I'm never again putting mustard and syrup in the same vicinity.  I'm still interested in a vegan/vegetarian sloppy joe recipe, because I think it could be good.  The lentils were right, I'm telling you.  It was the rest of it that was OH SO WRONG.

Comments

[Cyn]

I made that recipe, but I was almost out of chili powder and so only used about half a tablespoon, and I thought it turned out yummy. (But I like curry, so that might not be the answer.)