Anyone else find themselves making supper/dinner foods first thing in the morning?
This was another exercise in playing Jenga with a traditional recipe: Pull out several standard ingredients and see if the end result is still palatable. In the case of Simple Meat Loaf, it tastes better than it looks.
I opened what I thought was a can of cream of chicken soup for a casserole a couple of weeks ago, only to find that while scavenging the balancing act that passes for my small pantry, I set the intended can of soup back in the pile and a few seconds later found myself with an opened can of tomato soup.
In an effort not to waste even a tablespoon of
anything these days, (Mom, you were right!) I swore a bit, then transferred the soup to a container and popped it in the freezer.
This morning, I decided to put it to use by building a meat loaf around it with only a few other ingredients. I buy Tone’s Spaghetti Seasoning at Sam’s Club; don’t recall seeing it on the grocery store shelf. At any rate, the more readily available Italian seasoning blend and some dried minced onions will do the trick.
In fact, almost anything in this recipe can be substituted with whatever you happen to have on hand: tomato sauce—or even ketchup—instead of soup; a pound each of ground pork and ground beef instead of all beef; dried bread or panko crumbs instead of fresh; skip the Worcestershire; Egg Beaters instead of fresh eggs...
I didn’t include a ketchup/brown sugar topping, which would go a long way to improve the look of the thing, as my intention was to divvy up the slices two-by-two in plastic wrap, then toss the little packets into a ZipLoc freezer bag. I tend to eat meatloaf with ketchup on the side, anyway.
Considering it has none of the extra ingredients—primarily minced fresh vegetables—found in my standard meat loaf recipe, or better yet, Cavalcade of Food Kevin’s delicious ‘Buttermilk Meat Loaf,’ this really tasted pretty good!
