Meatloaf

Meatloaf is a staple around here. I find that a little funny, because growing up, I absolutely detested my mother's meatloaf! It was dry and full of nasty onion and just about the grossest think she made me eat, next to liver (which fortunately was a rarity!). Initially, my kids turned up their noses at meatloaf, until one day when I declared that I had made a "giant meatball" for dinner. Ever since, it's been one of their favorites. And it really was a true statement, considering that I make the same meat mixture for both meatloaves and meatballs!

Whenever I get a great deal on ground beef, I will often make my meat mixture and freeze batches of meatballs and cooked meatloaves. It makes for an easy supper on a busy night, as it reheats beautifully. I usually make my loaves large, to ensure at least a little bit of leftover loaf. As my son gets older, though (he's approaching 13), he is eating more and more and the child can put away meatloaf! So I don't have the leftovers I used to, but I usually still have at least some.

If you have a large portion of the loaf, a great thing to do is to cut it into cubes and use the cubes as meatballs in a spaghetti dinner. When I do this, nobody even notices the "meatballs" aren't round!

I know that a lot of folks will serve thin slices open-faced on bread and covered with brown gravy. That isn't a favorite here, but lots of people love it.

Another interesting thing I've done with meatloaf when I only had a little bit was that I chopped it up into little pieces and used it in place of browned ground beef in a lasagna. I wondered if it would work, and it was perfect! Nobody noticed a thing, and I saved myself the cost of a package of ground beef in that dinner. Even if you only have a little left, it's a great substitute for plain ground beef in your recipes.

And something else I've been known to do when I had a lot of it left was cubing it and mixing the cubes into a nice gravy and serving over noodles or cooked rice. You can mix in a bit of sour cream to make it more of a stroganoff dish if you're using noodles.

Hmmmm....now I wonder if I could use leftover meatloaf as the ground beef in my Pastitsio recipe. That just might be a little over the top.....

Thanks for all the comments I've been receiving! I will continue to try and post ideas for utilizing every bit of food that you have. Coming soon....bread crusts and heels and those last few buns in the package. :-)