Meatloaf and mashed potatoes: Wife’s birthday meal

It was my wife’s birthday today and everyone gets to choose when it’s their birthday in our house. She made it easy and decided on meatloaf and mash potatoes. We tried a new meatloaf recipe since I have been watching way too many Italian cooking shows recently and tried to tie in some of the meatball ideas into a meatloaf. The basic idea was to create a milk and bread slurry and mix it in with the typical recipe. Here was our idea:

• 1 C. coarse bread crumbs
• 1 C. whole milk
• 2 lbs ground beef
• 1 lb ground pork
• 3 carrots, finely diced
• 3 celery stalks, finely diced
• 1 onion, finely diced
• dried oregano
• dried basil
• 4 eggs
• salt and pepper

Make a slurry out of the bread crumbs and milk. Meanwhile, saute the carrots, celery and onion in a glug of olive oil. When nearly translucent, add oregano, basil, salt and pepper. In a big bowl mix everything together and mix until a pretty uniform consistency. Put into a couple loaf pans. Tonight we tried two toppings. This is a contentious issue in our house as I tried to experiment when I should just stick with ketchup. So one was ketchup and then I notice the dregs of a bottle of semi-cheap balsamic vinegar that needs to be used. I turn about a 1/2 cup balsamic into a reduction over medium heat for about 10-15 minutes. Top the meatloaf with what ever topping you want. Bake at 350 degrees for about an hour or until a temp of about 160. Make sure you let them rest for a bit.

For the mash potatoes, we had about 4 lbs of Yukon gold and russet potatoes from some earlier meals so we just cut them up and boiled until they were nice and soft. To make them mashed, I used my Christmas present to myself of a stand mixer and added:

• 1 pint sour cream
• 1 stick butter
• salt and pepper

Mix it all up with the whisk attachment. Done.

Somehow everyone thinks gravy is hard and are amazed that I seem to serve gravy whenever people come over. This one is super simple.

• 1 box (quart) of beef broth
• 1/4 cup of flour
• 1 C. cold water

Reduce the beef broth by about half then mix flour and water into a slurry. Add the slurry to the reduced broth and continue to stir until it achieves what you want in terms of consistency.

Last, some greens. The dino kale was on sale at the market so that’s what we made. Just a simple saute in some olive oil for a couple minutes and done. Wife and son were both happy so a successful birthday.