A Meal Fit for 'My' King! (Well ... Maybe if he lived in a trailer park?)

Aaaaaaaand ... They're off!

So ... today is the Kentucky Derby .... a day where Louisville, Kentucky shines brighter and bolder than any other day of the year.  Women and men alike are dressed in their most fabulous track attire after agonizing over just the right looks for possibly months!  And .... what am I doing today???  Why .... I'm in the kitchen cooking my husband his favorite meal for an early dinner, of course!

Why ... you may ask ... am I doing such a thing when I should be reveling at some swanky party or at the famous Churchill Downs?

Shameless plug picture of my daughter and the new horsey

Well ... it's really quite simple and boils down to two things.  (1) We just bought my 14 year old daughter an American Saddlebred horse a month ago (which was my trade off for an expensive Derby weekend, her birthday & Xmas for the next 27 years) AND (2) We are working on a very long list of high priced maintenance items on our home.  These two major things combined added up to me cooking away in the kitchen in order to keep hubby happy so that he doesn't implode while watching many, many dollars get sucked away by every subcontractor that steps foot onto our property.

With that said ... I thought I would let you in on my secret recipe for homemade MEATLOAF!!  I have 5 people in my family ... so I kinda' have to make a gigantic meatloaf.  We usually eat about 2/3 of it and then the rest is put into the refrigerator for cold meatloaf sandwiches the next day.

I have a terrible history of never measuring anything and when people ask me for a proper recipe ... I am hesitant to even attempt it ... I tend to just give them a pretty good outline.   So, these ingredients are approximations and prior to putting the meatloaf into the oven I make a tiny hamburger patty and fry it in a pan ... taste it .... and then make adjustments to the uncooked meatloaf at that point.

Ingredients

1 lb ground beef
1 lb ground pork or ground veal
2 eggs plus a TB or so of tomato paste
1/2 cup or so of milk
1 to 1 1/2 cups of panko bread crumbs
1/4 to 1/3  cup chopped fresh flat leaf parsley
1 ish TB fresh thyme
2 TB good worcestershire sauce (I really love Bourbon Barrel's products.  They are local and awesome in every way)
sea salt/fresh ground pepper (seriously ... )
2 - 3 carrots shredded
1 celery rib shredded
1 whole sweet yellow onion finely diced
1/2 red pepper finely diced
3 - 4 TB roasted garlic
1/2 cup chicken stock

Glaze:

1+ cup ketchup
1 tsp Gravy Master style browning sauce
1 large TB dark molasses
1/4 cup or so light brown sugar
1 TB Dijon mustard
1 TB apple vinegar
(mix all ingredients and readjust for taste)

mmmmm ... checkout these
glorious roasted beauties!

A day or two before (or day of) take several (20 or 30?) garlic gloves and wrap them in foil with a bit of olive oil drizzled on them.  Put them in the oven on a cookie sheet at 400 degrees for about 30 minutes or until they are mushy soft.  Take them out of the foil and put them in a zip lock baggie for safe keeping until use.  I use these non stop in cooking and keep a bunch of them in the refrigerator.

Dice carrots, onion, red pepper and celery.  In a large saute' pan ... add a bit of olive oil.  Saute' carrots, red pepper, onion and celery until slightly soft. While cooking sprinkle with a bit of salt/pepper. Add chicken stock to hot pan and deglaze pan.  Reduce until nearly all liquid is gone ... but still moist.  Let cool a bit.  Place all the sauteed ingredients into a blender along with the roasted garlic and give it a few good pulses.  (Me and one kid do not like crunchy onions) ... so this solves that problem.  Allow to cool completely.

In a small mixing bowl ... whip eggs and milk and tomato paste.   In a very large, wide bowl add pork and beef.  Pour in egg mixture, panko bread crumb, parsley, thyme, ample amounts of salt/pepper.  Pour in pureed carrots, celery and onion mixture to beef mixture. Add worcestershire sauce.  Mix completely with hands.  Do not over mix or squeeze beef mixture.  At this point ... I take a few TB's of beef ... make a tiny patty and cook quickly in a saute' pan.  Taste patty to see if the raw mixture needs salt, pepper, more garlic, thyme, parsley, etc... Add if necessary to your taste.

I do not use a meatloaf pan to cook my meatloaf.  I don't like it because you can't get the glaze on all sides and it just sits in it's own grease.  I just use a high sided cookie sheet.  I form my meatloaf (come on ... you used to play with Play-Do and it was fun!!) right on the cookie sheet and then put a thick glaze of the ketchup mixture onto all sides of the meatloaf with a pastry brush.

This is the raw meatloaf with the ketchup glaze ... Yeah, yeah
I know ... You should put foil down on the sheet.  Makes
clean up about a gazillion times easier.

The finished product! (... and YES ... I am aware that there is a giant butter slick on top of the
mashed potatoes .... that's the way hubby likes it ... and isn't that the point of all this ... to keep him happy?!?!?)

Bake at 350 uncovered until internal temperature reads 150 - 155 degrees.  I use an electronic culinary thermometer.  Makes things nice and very easy.  Otherwise ... it's about an hour to an hour and 15 minutes.  Take it out and let it sit for about 10 minutes.  This is crucial as it needs to firm up a bit.  Slice and serve.  I made homemade mashed potatoes and corn that was cut off the cob and sauteed with butter, salt/pepper.

ENJOY!!!!

Mood Poisoning .... It must be something I hate.

I really have been in quite the funk lately.  I have always been incredibly self analytical when it comes to my moods and behavior ... which, thankfully, has allowed me to stay off therapist's couches for most of my life.  I approach my terribly altered moods ... for the most part ... as amateur scientific studies.  As with any scientific study ... it is best to remain as objective as possible in order to reduce biased interpretations of the results.  Since I am analyzing myself through internal dialogue with 'myself' ... you would immediately conclude that I could not be biased because a part of 'me' .... the analyzer ... would be protective and defensive of ... well ... myself.  Here's the great thing about this scenario, though ... I am undoubtedly harder on myself than anybody else could ever be .... so you see ... there really is no chance for conflict of interest ... with myself .... and I indubitably get to the bottom of my 'mood poisoning'.

Now ... where were we .... Oh, yes ... my funk.

After days and days of analytical discovery and hours of self evaluation .... I have come to the unmistakable conclusion that I think way too often of my own problems and far too few of others.

I have been watching documentaries lately in order to be inspired to a 'call for action' of sorts.  I am horribly lazy by nature when it comes to getting into the thick of it and require a virtual kick in the ass typically to get off the sidelines and start to get in the game.  I only know that the more I start to ponder the woes of others ... do my piddly problems become inconsequential.   That's not to say that I don't have feelings and problems that need attending to ... it's just that if I allow my mood to be poisoned by constantly obsessing about drama and endless lists of wrongs in my life .... large or small ... I feel certain that I would turn into the type of person that I abhor: A self involved, pot stirring drama queen who feels so wronged by the world and is such a victim that she has no other recourse than to constantly suck energy from all that come near her in order to feed the bottomless pit of neediness.  Bleccccchhhhhhh!!  Yikes ... Even just writing that gave me the shivers ....

So .... I will forcibly banish the funk to the outer regions of my consciousness in order to get on with life in an enjoyable, positive manner and vow to do something wonderful this week for someone else that has far more pressing needs than me.  Selfishly ... I will do something selfless.