Meatloaf Revisited

I didn't make anything too special for Christmas Day because it was just the two of us. I decided to make one of my all time favorite meals - meat loaf, baked potato and German Red Cabbage. My favorite recipe for meatloaf is my mother's recipe but we just had it like a month ago. You can find the recipe on this site if you dig. I decided to try the meatloaf from Cuisine At Home Magazine. That is the only cooking magazine I get, and I don't think I will ever subscribe to another one. They present excellent recipes for classic dishes and also some unusual ones. Everything I have tried out of the magazine is perfect and they seem to have my tastes down perfectly in what they choose to include in the magazine. You can learn a lot by reading a couple years worth. The major innovation in their recipe for meatloaf is the way they bake it.



As you can see in the picture, they use disposable loaf pans with holes poked in the bottom so the grease drains. Then you just put it on a cooling rack and put that on a cookie sheet lined with tin foil. Not only do you not have to mess with draining grease from the pans, but you also have a no mess cleanup.

Cuisine At Home's Meatloaf
Makes a HUGE batch, so cut in half.

Combine 3 slices bread, 1 cup milk and 3 well beaten eggs and let sit for 1/2 hour.

Meanwhile saute 1 1/2 cups minced onions, 1 cup pureed tomatoes, 1/2 c minced celery and 1 T garlic for a few minutes. Let it cool about 5 minutes.

Add 1/2 c minced fresh parsley, 2 T Worcestershire sauce, 1 T salt and 2 t black pepper to the pot, and dump everything into the bread mixture.

Next use two forks to mix 2 lb ground beef and 3/4 pound ground pork, being careful not to pack the meat. You want it nice and loose. Load the meat into the pans without packing it down.

They had a special topping to put on. I made it but I can't say that it added anything so I won't include the recipe. They also had a recipe for tomato gravy which was OK but not great.



Here is my recipe for German Red Cabbage:

German Red Cabbage
Brown 2 strips of bacon in the bottom of a deep enough sauce pan. Remove bacon, crumble and return to pan. Add 1 cup red wine, 1 cup vinegar, 2 T brown sugar and 1 head red cabbage, sliced. Boil/cook uncovered for like an hour, adding more liquid as needed. At the end you want the wine/vinegar to be reduced.

After dinner we opened presents. We even had a few for our dog Daisy. As you can see she has already destroyed the Super Fluffy Squirrel 2000 that she opened like 2 minutes before.



All that activity wore her out.