Tuesday's Meatloaf Madness

Yesterday was spent in Martha mode as I took my turn preparing the main dish for the Family Promise clients who are spending this week at our church. For those of you not familiar with Family Promise, it is a national program assisting homeless families. Families are screened and when accepted into the program are assisted with finding jobs and housing. While in the program they spend their days at a center and their nights at different churches who join the network. The church provides a place to sleep and hosts a dinner for them each night as well as providing breakfast in the morning and a sack lunch. The families stay for one week at our church and then next week will spend the night in another church.

There are two families in the program this week. They requested no fried chicken and no cassaroles. Must have been one too many folks driving by KFC and dropping off dinner! I suspect these families must have been in the program long enough to be heartily sick of cassaroles as well. So I decided that meatloaf and mashed potatoes were the perfect comfort food for these people who are in a very stressful situation.

I was told to prepare enough food for 9 people--but that included a couple of toddlers. So I decided that my trusty meatloaf recipe had to be tripled (so there would be enough for dinner at my house as well that night). I made one ginormous meatloaf and one regular size and then fretted about how much longer the ginormous one should cook. Fortunately, I guessed right : about 1 1/2 times as long as the regular one. The enterprise consumed the entire afternoon, but came out great!

If you don't have a fail-safe meatloaf recipe, try this one:

1 1/2 lb. lean ground beef
1 cup V-8 juice
1 cup uncooked oatmeal
1 egg, slightly beaten
1/4 cup chopped onion
1 1/2 tsp seasoned salt
1/4 tsp pepper
1 shake Worcestershire sauce
1/2 cube, crumbled of Knorr Swiss Beef Bouillon

• Mix all ingredients well
• shape into a loaf and put into a greased 9x5 bread pan
• Add topping

Topping Ingredients: 1 1/2 cups V-8 juice, 1/4 cup ketchup, 1 tsp. Tabasco,
2 tablespoons brown sugar and 1 tsp dry mustard

• Mix together and pour 3/4 of topping over meat loaf
• Bake for one hour at 350 degrees
• Add the rest of the sauce and continuing baking for 20 minutes at the same temperature

My sister-in-law gets the hat tip for this recipe. The leftovers make wonderful sandwiches!
(Goes great with Texas Chocolate Sheetcake....by the way.)