Comfort Food: Volume 2

Meatloaf. If you like meat, you like meatloaf, but you only like your mom’s meatloaf—it seems to be some sort of rule, that no one makes meatloaf better than your mom. 

I don’t remember my mom ever making meatloaf, so I’m on my own here. I understood the general idea behind it—meat, breadcrumbs, egg, seasoning, bake.

In the interest of the blog and my lifestyle, the goal here was to make an All-American meal but as Californian (aka. Low-Cal) as possible. The meatloaf recipe has tons of veggies and is basically as low cal as meatloaf gets, while the mashed potatoes have a low-cal, high-vitamin surprise that no one saw coming! This turned so good that I didn’t even take the time to take a decent photo of it. Enjoy.

Meaty Veggie Loaf

Ingredients:

Meat:

1 lb 85%-90% lean ground beef

1 lb lean ground turkey

6 cloves of garlic (more or less)

4 carrots, diced

3 stalks of celery, diced

½ a red or yellow onion, diced

1 c. whole wheat breadcrumbs

1 med. Egg

garlic powder

cayenne pepper

salt & pepper

Glaze:

1 c. ketchup

1 ½ tbsp. brown sugar

1 tbsp. Honey

garlic powder

cayenne pepper

salt & Pepper

1.    Preheat oven to 350 Degrees.

2.    Mix / Squish (with your hands) all of the meat together until it all looks the same color.

3.    In a separate bowl, combine breadcrumbs, garlic powder, cayenne pepper, salt and pepper (I didn’t include measurments—use whatever amounts you feel best, usually about 1-2 tsp. of each, maybe less of the cayenne)

4.    Crack your egg on top of the meat, add breadcrumb mixture and all of the chopped veggies, mix thoroughly with your hands until everything is mixed completely.

5.    Place meat mixture into greased bread pan and squish down into all corners, pack it as much as possible.

6.    Make your glaze by whisking ketchup, honey, brown sugar and seasonings together. Use seasonings to your liking. I made my glaze a bit on the spicy side and it really complimented the meatloaf well. 

7.    Pour glaze ontop of packed meat.

8.    Place in center rack in oven for 1 hour.

9.    Let sit for 2-5 minutes after taking out of oven.

Garlic Mashed (Cauliflower) Potatoes:

Ingredients:

2 heads of roasted garlic (how to)

6 small/medium red potatoes, quartered

1 head of cauliflower, chopped into florets

½ c. light sour cream (check ingredients—should be cream and cultures only)

2 tbsp butter (I used what we call “fake butter,” Brummel & Brown’s Natural Yogurt Butter)

¼ c. chopped scallions

salt & pepper

1.    Plan ahead, roasting garlic takes about an hour. I started this while I was preparing my meatloaf, I also have 2 ovens—so it made this step fairly easy.

2.    Bring a large pot of water to a boil, add potatoes, cauliflower and some salt. Boil until potatoes are tender (about 20 minutes)

3.    Drain water and add sour cream and butter, smash potatoes and cauliflower together with a smasher (you can also blend, if that’s what you like—I like my potatoes chunky, so I smash)

4.    Add garlic and scallions and smash again. Salt and pepper to taste.

The cauliflower in this recipe is really subtle, which is the point—mashed potatoes with fewer calories. The texture is a little thinner than regular mashed potatoes and my boyfriend said he could taste the cauliflower, but I have a feeling if I hadn’t told him it was in there, he wouldn’t have known. I also placed the potatoes on top of a bed of steamed spinach, to add some greens.

It takes a little time and planning to make this meal, but it was totally worth it.

It was filing, comforting and awesome! And everyone knows that meatloaf is even better the next day when its in between two slices bread, so this was also a great (and healthy) lunch.

Next up on the Comfort Food Files: Cajun Chicken Pasta

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