MEATLOAF
Cindy Maddera
I wanted to make a proper Sunday dinner. In our house, growing up, lunch on Sundays was a big deal. We would all gather around the family dinning room table and Mom would cook a pot roast or a ham or something like that. There would be side dishes and rolls. There would be more effort put into the making of the Sunday meal than what was usually spent during the week. I have attempted to implement a Sunday meal in my adult life a number of times, but Sundays usually end up being chore days. Michael is rarely up before noon on a Sunday. By the time he gets up, I’ve already had a decent breakfast and I am not interested in a lunch. Dinner rolls around and I’m starving because I ended up eating a handful of tortilla chips at 2:00. I am also unenthusiastic about cooking anything elaborate because I scrubbed the house from top to bottom.
This has changed slightly since Michael and the Cabbage are home all the time. Chores happen during the week. I don’t have to spend a lot of time on Sundays getting ready for Mondays because there just isn’t that much to prepare. I have more time to spend on prepping food and testing out some experimental recipes, like potato and cactus enchiladas. That was a recipe I found online and it was a bust. The cactus part was good, but the recipe was more potato than cactus. I think I will try a mushroom and cactus filling next time. This is not the first time I have followed a recipe found online that has left me disappointed. The first time I made a meatloaf with Beyond Meat patties, I used their very own recipe from their website. It wasn’t that the meatloaf turned out badly. It was that it was lacking flavor and a bit boring. I have been hesitant to make another attempt because Beyond Meat is not cheap.
When we sat down to plan the menu for the week, I decided that maybe I needed to try again with the meatloaf. We would have a traditional Sunday dinner of meatloaf, mashed potatoes with brown (mushroom) gravy and green beans. A few people have asked me what is in a Beyond Meatloaf. I couldn’t tell if they were asking me how I made me meatloaf or what is in Beyond Meat. Beyond Meat is a plant based fake meat product that I think tastes like ground beef. I’m not really a good judge of that because I haven’t had ground beef in so long that I do not remember what it tastes like. Michael says that Beyond Meat doesn’t taste like ground beef, but he thinks it is pretty darn tasty. I don’t rely too much on fake meat products. I use them in recipes more now because that is the easiest way to get Michael to eat a vegetarian meal. What I like about Beyond Meat is that it is made of beans and brown rice and is not filled with tofu or gluten.
But what’s in my meatloaf?
That’s a very good question. I used a mixture of garlic butter croutons and saltines for my bread crumb mixture. I think it was a cup. I chopped some mushrooms and two shallots in the food processor. I sautéed this just to soften up the shallots. Then I mixed one package of Beyond Meat ‘ground meat’ with the mushroom/shallot mixture, bread crumbs, some garlic powder, some pepper, some basil, some tarragon, some tomato paste, maybe half a cup of grated parmesan cheese and some Worcestershire sauce. I smooshed it into a loaf shape and baked it in a bread loaf pan at 375 for thirty minutes, covered. After thirty minutes, I removed the aluminum foil and poured a mixture of BBQ sauce, ketchup, Tamari and a fancy mustard all over the top. Then the meatloaf cooked for another thirty minutes, uncovered.
I think this was the tastiest meatloaf I have ever made, real meat included, but I am an inventive chef. I make a better meal without a recipe. Some is my form of measurement. That is probably why I am not that great of a baker. Exact measurements are boring. I mean, I can do it if I have to, but luckily for me this is not a baked goods kind of household. There is quite a bit of creativity happening when I start cooking without a recipe. I like to imagine that I am Remy from Ratatouille. I cook from the heart.
It is incredibly frustrating for anyone who wants to repeat something I have made.