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Mom’s meatloaf, not

My mother’s meatloaf is baked with strips of bacon on top of it and while I like the smokey flavor that imparts, the bacon itself isn’t really all that toothsome. It’s just ends up being flaccid ketchup-y stuff that I usually toss.

Recently at a friend’s house I was served some smoked Gouda cheese which is not something I often have but it was seriously smokey and I had the idea that adding that to the meatloaf would really rock. It didn’t. Oddly, smoke flavor is very delicate and the hour or so of baking it pretty much destroys the smokiness of it but the real issue is that the cheese on the top turned into, well, let’s just say it would not have been out of place on the sandal of a charioteer in Ancient Rome. Apparently Gouda is not a melting cheese. Who knew?

So I decided to fix the problem by grinding the whole fucking mess up in a food processor and reimagine it as paté. I added an egg and threw it into a paté contraption I have because a certain horse-riding enforcer of the law just HAD to have it and then left it behind when he moved to the continent because it weighs 478 pounds. This is the first time I’ve used it in 11 years.

It was awful. I ate it but I’ll eat anything. Almost.

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Color coded meat

I stopped at Whole Foods where they have their meat labeled with colors that correspond to the general happiness of the animal. In my mind anyway. The orange label means meat with misery attached to it and green label means happy meat that grew up frolicking in fields with dandelions and smurfs.

I was happy to see some jolly, grass fed, green labeled ground beef because I had a hankering for my mother’s meat loaf. 

Twenty years ago I jotted down this very imperfect list of ingredients as my mother’s meatloaf recipe. Somehow I neglected quantities, procedures,  tried to follow it as closely as I could but, I dunno. A cup and a half of milk in a pound of meat? An eighth of a teaspoon of sage? I couldn’t taste that if I ate it by itself. Still I soldiered on.

I do not like mixing this crap with my hands and used a latex glove which is much more efficacious. 

It was good. Not like my mother’s good but good enough. It did not, however, bind together. I used only a cup of milk but I think that’s too much. The original recipe is now long lost and my mother does not remember even making it (this is sad since it was my favorite meal, and the leftovers, my favorite lunch, followed closely by leftover chili and spaghetti sandwiches—those were the days). I am unable to find anything like this on the google, so this may be lost to the ages. Unless I try to perfect it again when I find happy frolicking cows I can eat with impunity. And this time I will write the damn recipe down in full.





Posted on

Color coded meat

I stopped at Whole Foods where they have their meat labeled with colors that correspond to the general happiness of the animal. In my mind anyway. The orange label means meat with misery attached to it and green label means happy meat that grew up frolicking in fields with dandelions and smurfs.

I was happy to see some jolly, grass fed, green labeled ground beef because I had a hankering for my mother’s meat loaf. 

Twenty years ago I jotted down this very imperfect list of ingredients as my mother’s meatloaf recipe. Somehow I neglected quantities, procedures,  tried to follow it as closely as I could but, I dunno. A cup and a half of milk in a pound of meat? An eighth of a teaspoon of sage? I couldn’t taste that if I ate it by itself. Still I soldiered on.

I do not like mixing this crap with my hands and used a latex glove which is much more efficacious. 

It was good. Not like my mother’s good but good enough. It did not, however, bind together. I used only a cup of milk but I think that’s too much. The original recipe is now long lost and my mother does not remember even making it (this is sad since it was my favorite meal, and the leftovers, my favorite lunch, followed closely by leftover chili and spaghetti sandwiches—those were the days). I am unable to find anything like this on the google, so this may be lost to the ages. Unless I try to perfect it again when I find happy frolicking cows I can eat with impunity. And this time I will write the damn recipe down in full.





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Call the Midwife

My mother came over last night for dinner. Our plan was to watch Call the Midwife a PBS show that takes place in the 50s. I love this show and thought she might too. So I decided to make a retro meal on which I grew up: Her meatloaf and scalloped potatoes. And a iceberg lettuce salad. 

I have always loved her meatloaf and used to love to have cold meatloaf sandwiches packed in my lunch when I was in grade school. 

Call the Midwife was a great choice to watch with her. All about having babies in the 50s. Pregnant women smoking in the doctor’s office and nuns. She loved it. We watched 3 episodes. 

The meatloaf. I dunno, nothing I make tastes like my mother made it.