Last night was meatloaf night again. I now make sure Allison makes one idea contribution to each meatloaf, thus ensuring her support for it. This time, she remembered me saying that I’d used Pepperidge Farm Goldfish crackers in an earlier meatloaf, so she wanted that. I point out that it hadn’t worked out so well last time, as the crackers hadn’t soaked into the meatloaf, so they ended up as burnt bits. We agreed that the crackers should be ground down.
Ingredients:
- one school of goldfish
- about 20 ounces of ground beef. That’s right, boys and girls – beef this time, not turkey
- one container of leftover rice from a Pickup Stix order earlier that week
- leftover peas
- leftover whole wheat spaghetti, chopped up
- two packets of light soy sauce
- one large egg
- a bit of spaghetti sauce
- a lot more spaghetti sauce
- shredded cheese blend
Mixed together everything except the more spaghetti sauce and the cheese. Put into a glass pie plate, because Mrs. Nat’s TV has decided that she likes that form better, as it has more surface area and thus more opportunities for the burnt bits that remind her of her dear mother’s overcooking. Topped with more spaghetti sauce. Put it in a getting-to-375 over for a reasonable while, adding cheese on top about 2/3s of the way through.
Result: success in the eyes of everyone but the not-quite-2-year old, who just wasn’t in to eating last night. Not as good as the previous one, and I could have let it cook a mite longer to satisfy the Mrs. and her desire for hideously charred flesh.
