Sometimes you need to make dinner on the fly, literally making due with what you have. This Russian dressing uses canned sloppy Joe sauce as its base.

I am a huge fan of making do. I don’t like to have to rush off to the grocery store at the last minute because I forgot to pick up all of the ingredients I need. That may stem from the days when I had four children under five with three in diapers. Taking that crew shopping was enough to scar me for life! At that point in my life, if I didn’t have what I needed, it was too bad for everyone.

Nowadays, my youngest is nine and the other four older boys are either out of the house or lost in their late teenage worlds. I could shop any time, but I’d rather just do one big trip a week. If I forget something, it is still too bad (why do I want to say “so sad” after too bad?). So when I wanted to make a homemade Russian salad dressing and all I had was a can of Manwich, well…you can see where this went. Actually, the results were fantastic, so everyone was happy.