To A Bright Yellow: National Meatloaf Day

When I received the Facebook invitation from the Serious Eats group to participate in National Meatloaf Day, I sort of figured "what the hell?" Have I ever made meatloaf? No. Do I even like meatloaf? Um, no to that too. I didn't care, though, I wanted to do it anyway. It is rare that I receive a "cooking challenge" - most of the time people ask me for advice on their own challenges, or I'm called in to fix disaster situations (one time I made a friend's entire Thanksgiving dinner in under four hours, including completely making up a recipe for butternut squash soup out of thin air.) National Meatloaf Day, to be celebrated on October 18th, was my kind of holiday.

To find my meatloaf recipe, I turned to the bible - Mark Bittman's "How to Cook Everything." My favorite game is "Stump the Book" - try to come up with something to cook for dinner and see the book doesn't have it. I have not yet succeeded, but someday, I will prevail! Anyway, I looked up the recipe and it looked fine, but there was a problem.

You see, my mom was visiting and was sitting on the couch next to me, and she decided that Bittman's recipe wasn't good enough. Mom is chef extraordinaire, and declared that she had a better meatloaf recipe in some cookbook sitting at home. Bittman, I'm sorry- I'm sure your recipe is wonderful, but sometimes you just can't fight the mom. She called Dad and made him dictate it over the phone to me, and then she volunteered to make it. "No," I shouted. "This is my project! Do not commandeer my project!" We stared each other down, but I finally relented a little and agreed to let her at least go and buy me the ground beef at Citarella while I was at work.

Sigh. Mother-daughter fun all around. :)

Here's the recipe my mom insisted I use, from the cookbook "Diner" by Diane Worthington as dictated by my dad and translated by my mom:

2 tbsp vegetable oil
1 large onion, chopped
1 carrot, peeled and finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 lbs lean ground beef
1 1/2 cups plain bread crumbs
2 eggs lightly beaten
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
1/4 tsp dried thyme
1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley
1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce (woot to the hometown!)
2/3 cup ketchup

1. Saute onion and carrot. Add garlic at the end to give it a quick cook, and let cool.
2. Mix the vegetables with the beef.
3. Mix the eggs, salt, pepper, thyme, parsley, Worcestershire sauce and ketchup. Add it to the beef and combine.
4. Add the breadcrumbs to the whole thing, and mix some more.
5. Bake in an oiled loaf pan at 350 for an hour to an hour and 1/4 until the sides pull away from the pan.

So, fine. Nothing challenging there. I kind of hate ketchup, but whatever. I can do that.

Here's a list of all the things I did instead of making this meatloaf until right before the deadline:

1. Watched the Red Sox lose disastrously to the Indians in Game 2.
2. Had brunch at Cafe Lux.
3. Shopped at Zabar's for lox, bagels, rye bread and Israeli salad.
4. Wrote a law school application essay.
5. Took my mom to Crispo for dinner.
6. Went to work.
7. Went to hear Brian Stokes Mitchell perform at Carnegie Hall (amaaaaazing!)
8. Went to work.
9. Went to a cappella rehearsal.

Finally tonight, at 10pm, I sat down to make (well, stood at my kitchen counter top to make) this meatloaf thing. You know what? This was the easiest thing I have ever made except for scrambled eggs. It took me about 15 minutes to put together and throw in the oven. The only difficult part was mixing in all of the breadcrumbs - they just did not seem to want to combine very well. Otherwise, it went very smoothly. Unlike the current Red Sox-Indians series. (Sigh.)

My apartment smells amazing, and I can't wait to eat this for lunch tomorrow!

Here's the meatloaf pre-oven: