I’ve made meatloaf before- in fact, I think I learned the basics of meatloaf in elementary school in a class called Meatloaf 101 (which had absolutely nothing to do with Meatloaf, the man), but don’t make it often now. Today, I was a little stretched for time and didn’t have many ingredients to work with, so went with the obvious choice of meatloaf using the grain-fed beef that I had in the freezer. Luckily,  I was on my own, so I didn’t have to worry about any Foodies complaining about my choice to make meatloaf.

I  then made the relatively painless decision to check out Betty Crocker’s meatloaf recipe. Since the dish was invented roughly about the time the mythical corporate icon for General Mills was born in Minnesota,  I figured that Betty’s cook book would be the best bet.

After a quick cupboard check, I determined that I had most of the ingredients, but no bread crumbs, so once again, was forced to improvise, which is definitely not my strong point in the kitchen. I looked for crackers, but there weren’t any, so I decided to use a combination of unsweetened bulk granola and flax seed instead. I was worried about the choice of ingredients beforehand as they sounded kind of weird and more hippie-ish than meatloaf should be, but I figured that I could eat it even if it didn’t taste quite as well as I thought it would. 

I know you can’t wait to know how my meatloaf turned out. Your mouth is probably watering at the thought of flax seed inside grain-fed beef. I know, in all actuality, it probably sounds horrible and might bring back thoughts of your younger hippie days before you became a vegan.

Feel free to mentally insert a drum roll at any time- the meatloaf was ok. Nothing to write home about (which is kind of ironic since I’m actually taking up my precious time to write about it), but when is meatloaf ever anything special? Do you ever hear anyone bragging about how great their mom’s meatloaf is? No, you don’t because it’s the easiest thing to cook on the face of the planet.

I should be proud of my accomplishment of adding the hippie ingredients, but since neither the granola of the flax seed added anything to the taste of the meal, I’m not that impressed with myself. I think I’ll cook spaghetti the next time I try to find a use for my hamburger instead.