Onward Meatloaf Soldiers!

In honor of my short cameo on Eat Feed, my favorite podcast, I am happy to finally present a post I've been meaning to cover for ages! This meal is a staple in our household, and one of the many weeknight meals we turn to for daily sustenance.

This week's Eat Feed features comfort foods. When asked for my favorite comfort food, I immediately responded with an enthusiastic "Meatloaf!" There's a warmth about it, a massiveness in beef, bread crumbs and other seasonings. My mother made awesome meatloaf, and now my wife makes a killer 'loaf that's even better (sorry Mom).

Jenny's meatloaf started as a recipe from a cookbook given to her by her mother, and in the 10-20 batches we've made over the years the recipe has become our own. We add considerably more seasoning, and occasionally we mix things up, adding various veggies and spices.

That's the great thing about meatloaf. It's not a hard and fast recipe. If you add too much of one thing or another, no biggie. It allows for endless variation, and is pretty forgiving of mistakes. Jenny makes the batches with any combination of ground turkey and beef with a combined weight of about a pound and a half. We've played with all kinds of veggies, including carrots and peppers, and lots of additional seasonings (soy sauce is particularly interesting, so is worcestershire sauce). Heck, we've even substituted BBQ sauce instead of ketchup for a more smoky flavor.

Still, as a creature of habit, I've fallen into some consistent features. I've started grating the onion instead of dicing, as it produces smaller chunks in the finished product. Our recipe doesn't have any eggs in it, but we find it holds together pretty well. If you add a ton of vegetables, it may have to be added to keep it all together.

Lest you think that we spend hours a week tediously mashing raw meat in a bowl, in virtual slavery to dinner, I'm here to tell you we've found a better way. We produce our meatloaves in bulk and freeze them for later use. We just simply throw them in the fridge the day before to thaw, and we can enjoy meatloaf whenever we want to without the messy and time consuming prep work.

It's important that you make the loafs into equal sizes. It's a lot easier, once you get some experience, to accurately gauge cooking time and doneness if you make all your meatloafs the same from batch to batch. I HIGHLY recommend using a probe thermometer to test for doneness. It takes all the guesswork out of cooking in the oven, and avoids potential trips to the hospital. Since ground beef has tons of surface area, you have to make sure it's cooked to 160° all the way through. Speaking of ovens, we also cook our meatloaf in the toaster oven so that we don't have to give our first born to the gas man.

We freeze our batches into 4-serving loafs so that we can make dinners (and leftovers) for 2. Recently, we've taken this to the next level, partitioning out individual miniloafs (using a 1/2 cup measure) suitable for 1 person. That way we can precisely count points for each loaf, and helps the meat thaw considerably faster when the loafs are smaller. Besides, it makes an impressive formation of miniloafs when you're getting ready to freeze them. Behold my miniloaf army!

This level of convenience does come at a small price. The individual meatloafs tend to be a little drier, and its easier to overcook them. We feel that it's worth it for the added convenience.

I love this meal so much, that when given the chance to pick any meal for my birthday (an important tradition in our family), I asked Jenny to make me my favorite cold weather meal - meatloaf with mashed potatoes and broccoli. Yum.

Beef and Turkey Meatloaf
Adapted from a recipe in Betty Crocker's
Best of Healthy and Hearty Cooking

3/4 lb. Ground Turkey Breast
3/4 lb. Lean Ground Beef (95%/5%)
1/2 cup Italian Bread Crumbs
1 med. Onion, grated
3 cloves Garlic, mashed
1 can (6 0z.) Italian Herb Seasoned Tomato Paste, or equivalent
2 tablespoons Dried Parsley
1-2 teaspoons Italian Seasoning
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon pepper
Ketchup

Mix ingredients (with your hands, coward!) until thouroughly combined. Form loafs into convenient sizes. Consistent sizing will help ensure consistent cooking times.

Bake at 350° for 60 minutes or until internal temperature is 160°. Baste with ketchup after 20-30 minutes.

Makes 8-10 mini loafs, 3pts. each.

Ol' Blackie

I'm especially fortunate to have a kitchen full of wonderfully high-end equipment, a legacy from working for Williams-Sonoma for 4 months in college. I think I was the only person in my fraternity house with his very own set of All-Clad stainless pots. But ask me what my favorite pot or pan is, and I'll always pass over my saute pan and stock pot and go for my cast iron skillet.

I think it's because I watch too many westerns. No matter how hard I try, I just can't imagine the Duke serving a mess 'o salmon fillets (with a pan sauce) to the ranch hands. I'm likewise sure that Clint Eastwood never rustled up a batch of Coq au Vin to eat around the evening fire. Those guys ate real food, and no sissified city-folk cookware would do.

There's a certain permanence to my skillet. You don't own a piece of cast iron, you're married to it. And like a good marriage, with proper love and care it will mature and improve over time.

My skillet has been a regular around my kitchen for about 4 or 5 years , and it's really getting a nice season on the surface. Nowadays I suppose you can start with a pre-seasoned skillet, but heck that's just cheating. Our pioneering ancestors didn't start their westward expansion in Nevada!

Cast Iron Beans

2 cans Black Beans (drain 1 can)
1 med Onion, finely diced
1 Red Pepper, finely diced
3 cloves Garlic, pulverized
1 tablespoon Olive Oil
1 teaspoon Dried Cilantro
1/2 teaspoon Ground Cumin
1/4 teaspoon Cayenne Pepper
2 squirts Hot Sauce
1 handful Cherry Tomatoes, halved
1/2 cup Reduced Fat Shredded Mexican Cheese Blend
Salt and Pepper to taste

Heat your oven to 400°.

Heat the oil in the cast iron skillet (or a heavy, oven-safe pan) until it's very hot, and sautee the onions, garlic and peppers until soft. Add the beans, herbs and spices and stir until combined. Spread the tomatoes over the top and sprinkle cheese to cover.

Transfer the pan to the oven and bake for 30 minutes or until beans are hot and soft and the cheese just starts to turn brown.

Serves 4, 4 pts. per serving.

My Big Fat Greek Valentine

Napoleon Dynamite said it best when he said,"Girls only want boyfriends who have great skills!" Now I'm no master of numchuks or funky dancing, but I do have a few crazy romantic skills, like cooking and buying flowers. Trust me, I'd never pick such an unfortunate and somewhat inappropriate title for this post if I didn't have some major skills.

For all of you still wondering, the food was Greek...Jenny's German and Irish and quite petite. Valentine's day is like the Olympics for guys with romantic skills, so I appropriately turned to this proud nation for inspiration for dinner.

As always, Jenny and I continued our tradition of staying home for a romantic dinner for two. We do so to avoid all the hustle and crowds of local restaurants, movie theaters and such, and to give us an excuse to bust out our china.

The menu was simple. I didn't have time for major research and development, so I turned to the internet to find the critical recipes for a feast of gyros and sauteed artichoke hearts and peppers.

I started with a pound of whole lamb, marinated in Dave Lieberman's kebob spice mix. I added garlic, dried parsley and some olive oil to the mix to give it a bit more bite. I don't have a grill, so I broiled the lamb on skewers with a few halved tomatoes. The meat was delicious, if a little tough. I fault the cut of lamb. In the future, I think I'll just mix the marinade in with ground lamb and shape it onto skewers.

I teamed this up with AB's Tzatziki Sauce (which was perfect). But the real star of the show, was home-made pita bread, courtesy of Farm Girl Fare's excellent recipe and procedure. This really kicked up the meal to a whole new level.

Store bought pita bread will forever be bland, tough and flavorless. I did a rough calculation, and each loaf is about 4 points (don't hold me to that), which makes the whole thing so much better. The only thing I'd add is to let the unbaked rounds rest for five minutes before baking. My pitas puffed much better after the rest than before.

I'm not sure if the performance warranted a gold, but I'm pretty confident the judges would put me on the podium. Now all I have to do is work on my dancing.

Update 3/17 - The photo of my Valentine's spread was entered in this month's Does My Blog Look Good in This photography contest!

Bring Your Lunch!

If I could start my own food movement, I think it'd be to convince people to stop wasting money and calories eating out every day and instead bring your own lunch. Strangely, our fast-paced society has eschewed the traditional boxed or bagged lunch in favor of garbage designed to kill you slowly over time.

I've talked to many who fight for their right to pay $7 for lunch. The best excuses I've heard are:

• I don't have time to make lunch
• I can get better food out at a restaurant
• Eating at my desk sucks

To which I say "Horsepucky!" I give you exhibit A:

Feast your eyes at this monster! This passes for the regular daily fare of my officemate Kurt at Propane Design (he's pretty handy with a camera and Photoshop). In case you can't tell this is a mountainous sandwich of avocado, tomatoes, meats (plural), cheese, pickles and various condiments with some gourmet chips and a soda.

Now for all those counting calories, this may be a tad heavy. Kurt gets away with it because he rides his bicycle to work everyday (but that's another post). But this example proves my point nicely, that lunch-bag food doesn't have to be boring or bland.

While others are out spending an hour trying to fight the lines at your usual McBurger joint, Kurt makes these sandwiches in our break room and is back to work in half an hour or so. And it goes without saying that these sandwiches are far cheaper than anything else you can get in a "restaurant".

Jenny and I frequently make twice as much food for dinner as we need, then bring in the leftovers for lunch the next day. This takes even less time, since you're already cooking for dinner.

As for the claim that your desk sucks, I agree. So don't eat alone at your desk. This is where the movement takes off! If you can get more people to bring their lunch, then it doesn't have to be boring.

If you'd like a high-res image of Kurt's sandwich for your desktop or for making posters, you can download it here (750k).