RECIPE: Mom's Best Easy Meatloaf

Well, we all know by now that I am definitely not a talented food photographer -- I think I'm standing too close -- but honestly, it's hard to stay away from this meatloaf. (Nice segue, wasn't it?) I found this recipe online, did the usual tinkering that we all do to make it suit our family's particular taste, and served it last Wednesday with mashed sweet potatoes and green beans.

My husband very kindly allowed me to photograph his plate before he dug in.

Meatloaf is a very cost-effective main dish to serve the family because the "filler" in it stretches out the actual meat and allows for a multi-meal allotment that any busy family cook can appreciate. One of my favorite ways to use leftover meatloaf -- other than that way called LUNCH -- is to cut it in chunks and put it in baked spaghetti as meatballs. Er, meatcubes. You know what I mean. It's very good that way.

We enjoyed this a lot and it is a much easier recipe to prepare than the other meatloaf recipe I have posted here at InsomniMom, which is titled Comforting Meatloaf and can be found by clicking this link. True, the Comforting Meatloaf recipe is one that ingeniously hides a number of nutritious vegetables from the prying eyes of your picky children. And also true, it is a variation of Martha Stewart's mother's recipe and I have to say that the late Mrs. Kostyra -- God rest her soul -- really knew her way around a meatloaf.

But this recipe? It is much easier. It doesn't require lugging out the food processor to grate all those veggies, yet it is still really, really good. I don't know -- throw in an eighth of a cup of wheat germ for some extra nutritive value if you want to. But the main point is that this is an easy recipe, one that you can slap together in a matter of minutes when you need to serve the fam a meal that has nothing to do with On-Cor Salisbury Steaks, a frozen entrée that Kayte once scolded me soundly for dishing up chez McKinney.

Mom's Best Easy Meatloaf

Ingredients:

1 pound ground beef
1 pound ground sausage

3/4 cup oatmeal (either old-fashioned or quick)
1/2 cup ketchup
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper

Directions:

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Combine all ingredients in a large bowl; mix lightly but thoroughly. Spray a 9x13 baking dish with non-stick spray and put meatloaf into the dish, shaping into a loaf. Bake in oven for forty minutes. (I recommend not baking the meatloaf in an actual loaf pan because there won't be room for all the juices and they will spill out into your oven, creating a dreadful smoky mess and the smoke detectors will all go off and the dogs will bark and you'll have to gallop around the kitchen waving a magazine in the air to dissipate the smoke

Meanwhile, make the sauce. Because without the sauce, this may be somebody's meatloaf, but it can't be Mom's. Or even Dad's. The sauce makes the meatloaf and probably adds a serving of vegetables, so go ahead and pour it on.

Mom's Best Easy Meatloaf Sauce

1 cup ketchup
2 tablespoons mustard
2 tablespoons brown sugar

When the timer goes off for the first forty minutes at meatloaf cookage, drain off the fat and then apply the sauce liberally over the top of the meatloaf. Bake another twenty minutes or until the inner temp of the meatloaf reaches 160 degrees.

Allow to stand for about ten minutes before slicing. Makes the best leftovers, like, ever.