And Now For A Little Comfort Food....

It's been a hellish week....simply awful. It's hot, the inside of the  house is the temperature of a crematorium retort, I'm exhausted from the temp job I've taken on to make the money needed for the 'Malibu Fund' ( see the documentary button to the right if you have no idea what I'm talking about), everything smells like mildew...whine, whine, whine.

Um, this is wrong...

I need some comfort food. Macaroni and cheese? Too gloppy. I'm already feeling sticky enough. Lasagna is always good, but too much trouble, and I'm lazy right now. Meatloaf....Well, yeah....meatloaf. Meatloaf made with a dash of Worcestershire Sauce, a raw egg, some bread crumbs ( real bread crumbs the size of croutons, made by tearing up a slice of white bread into  tiny bits), salt, pepper, a little garlic powder, some diced onion, some parsley, whatever else strikes my fancy from the spice rack, all squished together by hand ( Yea, verily, before the advent of the sterile food service hand cover, there was the freshly washed bare hand, a marvel of design, given to mankind by the gods to squish together the raw ingredients of meatloaf).?

Okay, this is it....

When you are finished getting your jollies by kneading the ingredients into the raw meat, form it into a loaf and place in an oven proof pan, or a pie plate....or, hey...a loaf pan. I'm easy to please, folks. Just make sure the loaf is patted down so it forms a loaf and sticks together when sliced. Then pour a can of diced tomatoes over the whole thing , and if it happens to be in a baking dish with room to spare, chop up a carrot, a peeled raw potato, celery and a quartered onion. Bake at 350 degrees until the loaf is browned and done. Slice the loaf and remove the vegetables to a serving platter, and separate the grease from the meat infused tomato sauce. Thicken the drippings and liquids into gravy, and....It's the Food of the Gods, guaranteed to cure anything that  might be ailing you at the moment. Served  with the roasted vegetables, it's a complete meat. It's also good with a side of homemade mashed potatoes and the roasted vegetables ( leave out the raw potato).

This is seriously good eating, folks, down home Eastern Maryland style like my grandmother used to make at least once a month when I was a kid. It was hot, and good and made you feel special and loved. You can tell it's homemade because there isn't an actual recipe. If you're not a gravy maker, take the time to learn ( it's really not that hard!), or paint the top of the loaf with ketchup or BBQ sauce. Truthfully, I like it better with the tomato based  gravy...Oh, yeah, you can serve it with brown gravy, but I think the tomato gravy makes it more special and it tastes better. Bake some biscuits to sop up the gravy because you don't want to miss any.

It's magickal, I promise.

( My apologies to Marvin Aday, aka, Meatloaf, who I think is a seriously fabulous rock singer.)