J.D. Pooley | Sentinel-Tribune Cooks Corner Shank. 6/22/2020With everyone home bound, due to coronavirus, and hot, because of a Northwest Ohio heat wave, it’s good
to have an inexpensive recipe on hand that feeds a lot of people and is easy to throw together.
Charlotte Shanks’ Sloppy Joe recipe came from her mom.
“It’s an easy one, it’s cheap. It’s not uncommon for us to end up with three to 12 extra teenagers
running around, so it’s easy to just throw together,” she said.
The taste offers a little extra, though — something Shanks discovered more about as she grew up.
“This is the way my mom always made Sloppy Joes when I was a kid and I always thought that’s how
everybody made them.”
At potlucks, young Shanks would try the typical Sloppy Joes, usually made with a canned filler added to
ground beef.
“My mom never bought a can of Manwich in her life,” she said.
Her mom’s version has extras in it, that at the time Shanks thought was a common recipe. Now she realizes
those extras, like the beans, were to make the dish more filling .
“When I first married, I was in the kitchen making Sloppy Joes for dinner and my husband came up behind
me and said ‘what are you making?’ I said ‘Sloppy Joes.’ He said ‘that’s burger and beans.’”
Curious, Shanks asked her mom, Mary Martin, about the recipe she’d grown up with.
“She said, ‘Charlotte, the only reason I put baked beans in the Sloppy Joes was I couldn’t afford enough
meat, and it makes the meat go further,’” Shanks said. “I learned from that moment on to look at a lot
of the stuff my mom did and realized that she taught home economics at the university, and she was a
true home economist.
“She was just making things go further.”
The base recipe is the meat and beans.
“I open my refrigerator and say, ‘oh, there’s this little bit of spaghetti sauce — I don’t want that
sitting in there. Here’s this can of salsa, throw that in. Cocktail sauce — you know you get those
little bits and no one’s ever going to use them. Throw it in the Sloppy Joes.”
If the refrigerator happens to be cleaned up, still add something sweet, Shanks said. That could be
sugar, maple syrup, honey or jam.
She likes Bush’s beans and gets all of her hamburger at Belleville Market.
Shanks enjoys both cooking and baking.
“Cooking is a little bit more forgiving. You can do a handful of this, handful of that. Whereas baking is
more of an exact measuring.”
She and husband, James, have been married 25 years and have five children. The key to feeding that many
mouths is not ordering pizza, Shanks said.
It’s putting beans in the meat. And using what’s in the pantry, she said.
“With the whole quarantine thing, I was very conscious of what can I do so I don’t have to go to the
grocery store,” Shanks said. “I told the kids, I’m totally channeling mom. So we’ve eaten a lot of
stuff, like a little bit of meat with a lot of rice or a lot of beans or a lot of vegetables.
“You know, one pound of sausage with four or five different kinds of vegetables thrown in can go
further.”
Skillet dinners are her specialty.
“I don’t plan ahead enough to do casseroles. In my mind, a skillet dinner is basically a casserole that’s
done in 20 minutes, instead of having to bake it ahead of time.”
Her kids, who range in age from 22 to 13, are not picky, eating asparagus and liver without complaints.
All of the children, Matthew, Peter, Katie, Becky and Robert, are home schooled. They are involved in
4-H, music, scouts and church.
Shanks grew up in Pemberville and is an Eastwood High School graduate. Her degree in restaurant and
institutional management is from Bowling Green State University. She said she works “very part time” as
a substitute at Wood Lane Residential Services.
“I love my residents. They are my other family.”
The family lives with her father, Elden Martin, who is 88, in Bowling Green. It’s an arrangement that
works out well for everyone, Shanks said. They can care for him and the house is big enough for everyone
to have space, she said. Her mother died 20 years ago.
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