I made meatloaf the other night.
Not my mom’s meatloaf recipe, because that would have been too easy. I already knew that one would taste good.
No, this was experimental meatloaf.
I’d attempted an awful meatloaf recipe a few weeks previous. It relied heavily on bulking up its mass with shredded carrots. The result tasted like a sponge. Dipped in boring. Boring sponge.
This one seemed more promising.
In addition to using plenty of seasoning, the recipe had a unique plan of dividing the ingredients between 2 loaf pans, cutting the cook time down to 25 minutes.
That was a really awesome idea, because through the years, the majority of my meatloaf trouble has come from, “cook for 40 to 45 minutes.” Being a procrastinator, that means I start preparing dinner 53 minutes before I need it. And prep always takes longer than 13 minutes. And cooking ALWAYS takes longer than 40 minutes.
My other meatloaf pitfall has been that my meat never thaws as quickly as I expect. It’s very hard to mix all the ingredients together while there are still big chunks of icy ground beef.
Even though it was ground turkey this time, the pattern stayed true to its non-thawing form. But it didn’t daunt me. I scraped off the thawed part and put the still frozen chunks in the microwave on defrost.
While that problem was resolving, I finished mixing the spices and other ingredients into meat that had thawed on time.
While I was doing this, my husband called on his way home from work.
Let me just say something about this. Chris is my favoritest person in the whole world. There is no one I’d rather talk to. But he literally calls at the craziest point in my day. All the kids are home, and the dogs want dinner and I’m chopping things. So I try to just add him into my multi-tasking, because that’s how much I like him.
This time, I managed to do all-the-things simultaneously. I divided the meat into the two loaf pans and popped it in the oven for its 20 minutes. All while finishing up my conversation with my husband.
And you know what? The 2 pan method worked! The meatloaf was totally done in 25 minutes. Obviously the pieces were smaller/shorter, so I had to serve each person more, but my husband loved the flavor. And the kids didn’t hate it, which is basically a compliment from them.
After dinner, Chris opened the microwave to heat up some baby food. And do you know what he found? The rest of the meat that was supposed to be in the meatloaf.
Yeah.
There was a reason those meatloafs were so short. Literally a third of dinner was missing.
And the thing is, if I make it right next time, the family probably won’t think it tastes as good. But with my track record, do we really think that making it “right” is a concern?
Because people always seem to want these things, here is the recipe. My husband took a bite and let out a happy sigh. I asked if it was good and he replied, “It tastes like meatloaf.” This glowing review lets you know how bad the previous attempt had been.
