November 11 – November 17, 2024

Monday:                  Cottage Pot-Pie / Crunchy Iceberg with Blue Cheese

Wednesday:          Seared Chicken Thighs with Cherry Tomatoes and Olives

Thursday:                Fall Meatloaf

Friday:                      Salade Niçoise

Saturday:                Sausage and Pepper Pizza with Ricotta and Olives

Sunday:                   Chicken Chemuin, Mashed Potatoes, Salad

Comfort Me with Meatloaf

It is that time of year when I stop wearing gym shorts around the house, at which point, depending upon what I choose instead of the shorts, Beez is willing to be seen with me again and we can even go on walks in the neighborhood without her examining me like a drill sergeant at roll call and asking, “You’re going dressed like that?”

It is also that time of year when the screened-in porch gets shut down, the grill gets covered, dinner no longer focuses so much on salads and our taste turns to the umami-rich, cheesy, warming flavors of comfort food and screams for old favorites:  stews, roasts, cottage pies, pasta with meat sauce and, perhaps most of all, for meatloaf.  From the incredible, savory, mouth-filling bite of a meatloaf just out of the oven (hopefully with a little crisp on the edges) to the tangy, solid bite of leftover meatloaf, slathered with ketchup between two slices of good, lightly toasted bread, there is nothing I don’t like about this composite dish, except the initial mixing of it and the tedium of getting the – at that point – loose and gooey mess into loaf form on a cooking sheet.

We have tried many different ways to cook meatloaf – and there are hundreds we have yet to try – but at this moment in time, with the Steelers at 8 and 2, with Donald Trump about to nominate his chauffeur for head of the NTSB, and with snow in the forecast for Pittsburgh, our absolute favorite is Katie Lee Biegel’s Fall Meatloaf which she thinks mimics the flavors of a Thanksgiving meal.  It doesn’t really, but cranberry is involved as well as packaged stuffing mix (don’t sneer).  The result is cravable and the leftovers will save you the trouble of making lunch the next day, or possibly dinner.  Or, you could just invite us over and we’ll help you polish it off in one sitting.

Fall Meatloaf

(adapted from Katie Biegel)

Timing:                 2 hours, 10 minutes (see note below the recipe)

Ingredients:

2 lbs. ground turkey, 1 ½ cups ketchup.

1 can whole cranberry sauce (yes, the kind that can slide out of the can in one solid, jiggling cylinder)

½ jalapeño or serrano pepper, 1 yellow onion, finely diced, 2 stalks of celery, finely diced

3 cloves garlic, minced (we used one clove)

1 ½ cups stuffing mix (yes – stovetop stuffing – don’t look down your nose)

2 large eggs, lightly beaten, 1 tablespoon olive oil, Salt and ground black pepper

Prep:

Dice the onion, celery and garlic

Beat the eggs

Slice the pepper

Cook:

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees – line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

Combine the ketchup, cranberry sauce (you’ll need to mush it down with a large spoon or fork) and the pepper in a saucepan over medium.  Bring to a simmer and let cook, stirring with a whisk to smooth out the sauce, for 3 minutes.  Remove from heat, remove pepper, set aside.

In a skillet, heat 1 tablespoon of olive oil in a medium skillet over medium.  Add the onion and celery and cook until both soften and become translucent – about 3 ½ minutes.  Add garlic and cook for at most another minute.  Remove from the heat and allow to cool slightly.

Combine the turkey, stuffing mix, eggs, 1 teaspoon salt and ½ teaspoon pepper in a large bowl.  Add the onion and celery mixture and 1 cup of the ketchup sauce and stir gently until just combined – don’t overmix.

Transfer the mixture to the prepared baking sheet and shape into a loaf.  Pour the remaining ketchup sauce over the loaf and spread so that it covers the entire surface.  Bake for 75 minutes.  Remove from the oven and let rest for 5 minutes, then slice and transfer to a serving platter.

Note:  I needed to speed up the cooking, having started to cook too late.  I set the oven at 425 F and cooked for not quite an hour.

Below is a sunset seen from Casa Stuarti