Mmm, Mmm Meatloaf

Until my freshman year in college, I'd never eaten at The Cheesecake Factory, nor had I eaten meatloaf. The night before I went to The Cheesecake Factory for the first time (for Lindsay Wieczorek's birthday), I was hanging out with Chris Rooney in Irish (one of the Honors College dorms) when someone returned with Cheesecake Factory leftovers--- They smelled fantastic! I asked what the leftovers were... MEATLOAF. When I went to The Cheesecake Factory the next night, I ate meatloaf. It was delicious.

I know some people have a meatloaf-aversion due to some bad experiences. In fact, I think that's why we never ate meatloaf when I was a child. Meatloaf conjures all sorts of hideous conceptions of stale, fatty, dense, left over messes. But, since I never ate meatloaf unless it was conceived as meatloaf (not a leftovers dumping ground), I think meatloaf is fantastic!

I was looking for recipes to use some of the ground turkey I bought and found this recipe for "Autumn Turkey Loaf". I made it tonight and it's delicious. I used about double the amount of celery and onions; but, otherwise, I followed the recipe. Two thumbs up!


Autumn Turkey Loaf

Ingredients: 1 lb. ground turkey, completely thawed; 1/4 cup chopped green onions or celery (or mixture); 1 cup (about half box) of seasoned instant stuffing mix; 1 egg, beaten; Salt/pepper to taste (I only lightly, lightly salted it because the stuffing was pretty salty.); 1 can (jellied or whole-berry) cranberry sauce, divided (I used whole-berry)

Directions: Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Begin by putting ground turkey into a bowl that’s large enough to knead in. Chop about 1/4 cup of green onions or celery (I used 2 green onions and about half a stalk of celery to achieve this amount). Add the chopped vegetables to the bowl along with about 1 cup (half of a regular-sized box) of instant stuffing mix (like StoveTop).

Pour a beaten egg over the mixture and sprinkle with salt & pepper. Add about 1/2 cup of the cranberry sauce (jellied or whole-berry) while reserving the rest of the can for later to be used as topping. Roll up both sleeves and start kneading the mixture until ingredients are generally distributed evenly.

Place the kneaded mixture in an ungreased (I put PAM on mine) loaf pan. Place uncovered loaf in oven and bake 45-60 minutes.

When loaf is done and removed from oven, take remaining cranberry sauce from can, place in covered, microwaveable bowl and microwave for about one minute and stir well. Slice the loaf and serve drizzled with melted cranberry sauce.

John and I had an errand to run... so I finished cooking the meatloaf before I left (actually it only took 45 minutes and I forgot to pre-heat the oven... I ended up covering it at about 30 minutes--so it wouldn't burn), and then put it back in the oven with the cranberry sauce (not microwave) on top and covered with foil for about 10 minutes. That worked really well.

If you like meatloaf, definitely try this recipe.