Homemade Sloppy Joes

I love Sloppy Joes, but Devin and I came to a pass when we got married because he grew up with the McCormick seasoning packet and I grew up with Manwich. For years we've been using the seasoning packet and a can of undrained diced tomatoes with green chilis. It's really yummy that way, but the other day I couldn't for the life of me track down where the seasoning packets were at Price Chopper, and I was tired of relying on a stupid seasoning packet when I had a cupboard full of spices. I found a great recipe on allrecipes.com

The original one can be found here, but I tweaked it a little:

1 lb ground beef
1/4 cup chopped onion (I used red but I can't see that it matters)
1/4 cup green bell pepper (I used yellow because that's all we had)
can petite cut diced tomatoes (drained. You could use less ketchup/tomato sauce below if you leave them undrained)
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1 teaspoon dry mustard
1 cup ketchup (or you could use plain tomato sauce, but you may want to add a little more sugar and I'd start with 3/4 cup instead of a full cup in case it's runnier)
3 teaspoons brown sugar
1/2 tsp chili powder (add more if you'd like a little more zip. I did)
1/3 tsp cayenne pepper (if you don't have kids that complain about things being too spicy all the time. I do have kids like that, so no cayenne pepper for us. Wimps.)
salt to taste
ground black pepper to taste

In a medium skillet over medium heat, brown the beef, onion, and green pepper. Drain off liquids. Add tomatoes.

Add everything else and mix thoroughly. Reduce heat and simmer. The recipe says for 30 minutes, but we only let it simmer for 7 minutes and it was perfectly yummy.

I like to serve them over sandwich thins, but it's sloppy joes, not rocket science. You can figure out which kind of bun you all like best. :)