I Feel Like Meatloaf Tonight

I was trying to think of something for dinner tonight as we are still doing our dinner challenge, and remembered that I had a whole gob of organic spinach in the fridge that was marked down to $0.99 on a manager’s special at Dillons! I needed to use it up and thought I might “hide” it in some meatloaf. So I went searching on the internet for a recipe that would use spinach in meatloaf. I found this recipe on Recipezaar:

• 2 eggs
• 1 1/2 lbs lean ground beef
• 1/2 cup oats
• 1/2 cup wheat germ
• 1/2 cup shredded carrot
• 1/4 cup onion
• 1 (10 ounce) package frozen spinach, thawed
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon pepper
• 1/2 cup steak sauce

Mix everything together except the steak sauce. Shape into a loaf and bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes. Add steak sauce on top the last 10 minutes.

Well, I had to make a few adjustments as follows: Instead of wheat germ, I just used more oats as I didn’t have any wheat germ. I also didn’t have any carrots to grate so I used…zucchini. I’m so predictable! Since zucchini has more moisture than carrots, I didn’t even need to use the milk. I also had fresh spinach instead of frozen spinach. When I was gooping it all together, I was getting a tad nervous as the fresh spinach seemed to be kind of “clunky” for lack of a better term. Pretty soon, though, it started to get soggy and more manageable. I also added a little bit of garlic salt and some southwest chipotle seasoning I got at Sam’s Club. Instead of baking it in the oven, I just put it in the crockpot on high for about 4 hours. I also omitted the steak sauce as I didn’t know if David would like it and figured we could just put it on at the table. I was really excited to see how it would turn out. Much to my delight, everybody liked it! I also fixed corn on the cob and garlic bread (ghetto garlic bread to be exact – hamburger buns with butter and garlic salt baked in the oven for a few minutes. I was going to do homemade biscuits but I ended up working a little later tonight). It all turned out really yummy and I have enough for meatloaf sandwiches tomorrow. I may make some spaghetti sauce to pour on top. Anyway, I was really excited about how it turned out. For dessert, we had ice cream sandwiches or…drum roll please…zucchini bread. I don’t think I’m going to plant zucchini again next year. We are going to be growing it out our ears by the time summer is over.

Next post: Our recent trip to Austin! It was definitely a whirlwind tour but more on that later. Until we meet again, adieu.

By the way, on this post, I tried my hand at a little html!