Holly's Meatloaf Recipe

Ingredients:

1 lb practically organic ground beef

½ of an onion-diced

½ of a green pepper-diced

½ cup oats

½ cup crushed saltine crackers

1 egg

1 organic carrot-shredded

1 clove garlic-chopped

Seasonings: (I just shake them in until it looks good)

Salt

Pepper

Garlic and Herb

Parsley

Topping:

Brown Sugar—tons and tons

(You can probably replace with honey, you just want a sweet yummy topping)

Organic ketchup—enough to soak up the brown sugar…lol

Preheat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Mix all ingredients and seasonings in a large bowl. Place in a medium sized loaf pan, and scoop all remaining veggies that didn’t mix into the meat and place on top of loaf. Bake for 50 minutes. Take out and put on the topping. Bake for another 10 minutes.

You then have a moist, vegetable packed meatloaf. It doesn’t stay together very well, but I’m not looking for cooking show quality appearance here, I’m going for taste. It may stay together better if there wasn’t as many vegetables stuffed into it, but I try to get those servings in anywhere I can. I love it, Luke loves it, and the kids won’t go near it, although they have both tasted it and had a few bites, I don’t think they really recognize it as anything they might want to eat. Lets face it; meatloaf does not look like a chocolate chip cookie!

You can freeze them, without the topping, but I find myself setting the oven to 450 instead of 400, and after an hour, checking it to find that it is still a little undercooked even though the top looks done, so I put it back in for another 20 minutes or so, and then add topping and leave it in for another 10. My plan next time is to let the meatloaf thaw overnight, and drain it a little bit before cooking, and see how long it takes.

Wal-Mart was out of the medium sized pans, so we bought the big size last time. I made those a little bit bigger, using a pound and a half of beef, and ¾ of veggies, oats, and crackers. I don’t know how long those will take to cook, especially frozen. You can do what I did with this recipe, just throw a bunch of stuff together, cook it, and see if it’s edible. If you don’t like it, I’m sorry, I guess you don’t have the same taste buds that we do.

So here it is. It doesn’t look the prettiest, but it’s yummy!