Mike's Favorite Meatloaf

Since we are moving into the cold weather rather quickly this year this recipe sounds like it will both fill the stomach and warm the house. Thanks for sending it to us Bo!!

Boreegard Reconstructs the Old Family Meatloaf

My wife was once the warder and keeper of a medium sized black 3-ring binder full of inexpensive white lined sheets of paper, on which eventually all our early family recipes were written. It was a wonderful hodgepodge of ways to stretch a dollar. You could easily thumb through it and find anything from soup to goulash, to pumpkin pie (both Ed Nuttall’s rum pie and our non-boozy one—oddly, the non-rum one was much nicer), to the mainstay of all American family meals—MEATLOAF.

We had several recipes for meatloaf. My favorite was the one titled MIKE’S FAVORITE MEATLOAF. Go figure.

This venerable compendium eventually collected the stains of use—spatters of butter, drops of gravy, sauces and indiscriminate juices, all long since dried. I always thought of them as honorable proofs of an active kitchen. But the hausfrau of the household was not so sentimental, and noted too that the binding was both cruddy and hanging by a thread. I volunteered to repair it with duct tape, but for some reason that would not do.

Thus began a project to transcribe the holy writ into the mechanical bowels of our computer. Its gut is so deeply mysterious in fact, that we can’t find MIKE’S FAVORITE MEATLOAF, nor any of the rest of them either. Someday we hope to.

But in the meantime, tonight I have put memory to the test, and I give you, as best I can, the reconstructed version of my meatloaf. I vouch that it is very very close to the ancient receipt.

INGREDIENTS

Group A
Half an 8-ounce can of tomato sauce.
One large egg—beaten.
A medium onion—chopped finely.
One cup of bread crumbs.
1-½ pounds of ground beef.
A handful of dried parsley
1 tsp. dried dill weed.
2 tbsp. grated Parmesan cheese.
1 tsp. Worcestershire sauce
salt and pepper

GROUP B
1-cup beef broth brought to a boil.
1 tsp. Worcestershire sauce.
1 tsp. gray poupon mustard.
4 oz. of tomato sauce.
2 tbsp. molasses


TO DO

Combine A. and make into a loaf. Place in an appropriate baking pan or Pyrex dish, and place in a 350-degree oven.

Combine B. and use generously as a basting sauce every 10 or 15 minutes.

Bake for one to one and a half hours.

Let sit for ten or so minutes.

Slice and serve with the mashed potatoes you’ll certainly want as an accompaniment, along with the pan drippings as a gravy.


My favorite. Hope you like too.


Bo aka Mike O'Neil