Loafing

Over the weekend when I wasn't letting myself down with my Christmas clean up, I was cooking. I took a tour of my freezer and did not find any meatloaf! I didn't have to look real hard because I knew there weren't any in there. I ate it all, still I was hopeing for an orphan. The family that was baked together, was all gone together.

I also had room for more loaf so more loaf I was going to make. I was getting a little tired of what I had been doing so I went looking for new recipes. I looked a lot of them, some were too much like what I was doing others used too many ingredients and others that were Hipster Food truck versions of it and those make me tired. I don't want to use have to use ground sirloin and artisanal breed crumbs and organic, locally sourced heirloom  tomato paste. That is the secret of the Hipster Food truck is that  not that they make outstanding new versions of the old favorites, but that they make idealized, perfect world versions of "comfort food".

It makes me uncomfortable.

Of course its better! Ground sirloin is better than ground round! Duh.  But why not just have the sirloin? Why waste it in a lowly meatloaf? Suck it hipster irony, I see you. I'm going to eat grocery store bologna on a hamburger role and non-ironically eat some Cheetos. Make something taste good without using the born on third base platinum versions of the ingredients and then tell me how good your fancy hipster food truck food "comfort food" is.

Speaking of the pressed aluminum versions of the classics. I made mine with ground beef, pork and turkey and then I dumped in some leftover bacon bits. I added a package of plain Jane button mushrooms,  a couple of frozen green bells and tomatoes from last years garden, a can of tomato paste and then I dumped in some oatmeal for filler, a couple of eggs to bind and a splash of my chicken broth for fluid. Because the hipster bacon mania has seeped even into my kind of hermetically sealed non-hipster environment, I sprinkled the rest of my bacon bits on the the tops of the loafs.

Note the grease drops. That was about all the grease I harvested from the loafs. I had hoped for more because I found a recipe for pasties and it called for suet  to be added on top of the mixture prior to baking. I was sure that a bunch of loafs would net me  all the suet I would need. Foiled.

Damn good meat loaf though.