mom's meatloaf

It keeps snowing. It never stops. I have needed to go to the grocery store for days, but refuse to go in the snow. Luckily I'm a hoarder and we have a overloaded freezer and pantry. Lately, I have refused to make dinner meals focused on what Elle will eat. We have a standing rule in our house that if she won't eat dinner then she just doesn't eat. She doesn't get a snack before bedtime either. Last night I asked her if she wanted to come eat dinner. She responded, "No thank you." At least she was polite, I guess.

Meatloaf sounded so good tonight. A nice comfort food meal for a snowy day. As I was looking at the recipe I realized I didn't have some of the ingredients - that was not going to stop me. The nice thing about meatloaf is that it is really hard to mess up. As long as you have beef, and you make sure it is the right consistency you are probably good to go. Here's how much I deviated: we didn't have sausage, so I left it out. We didn't have eggs, so I substituted 1 teaspoon of baking soda and 1 tablespoon of white vinegar. We didn't have bread crumbs, so I ground up saltine crackers. We didn't have tomato sauce, so I used ketchup. I also added a 1/4 teaspoon of garlic powder because I'm obsessed with garlic powder. Guess what, it still turned out great! Elle even ate tonight!

Mom's Meatloaf

Ingredients

1 lb ground beef
1/2 lb sausage
1 egg
1/4-1/2 cup bread crumbs (finely ground)
small can of tomato sauce (divided)
3 Tbsp dried onion
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper

Instructions

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. In a bowl combined beef, sausage, egg, half of the can of tomato sauce, onion, and seasonings (I use my hands). The mixture should stick together like you are making a giant meatball. If the mixture is too wet, add more bread crumbs. If the mixture is too dry, add more tomato sauce. Press the meat mixture into a 5x9 bread pan. Pour a thin layer of left over tomato sauce on top of meat. Cover with foil and bake for one hour. Half way through remove foil and finish baking. I like to broil my meatloaf at the end for a bit to make sure the tomato sauce isn't liquidy (nice English, I know). If you choose to broil, make sure to keep an eye on it so it doesn't burn.