What's Cookin'?

I've never been a particularly good cook.  I love food though and have made many, many attempts to be good at making it.  When I was young, I failed miserably, but my family would always valiantly eat whatever I presented to them.  Flat biscuits.  Hockey puck pork chops (still one of my specialities).  Various cakes that for one reason or another didn't work.

Over the years, I've gotten better but I still don't consider myself a good cook.  Once upon a time, I made terrific meatloaf.  I got the recipe off the Quaker Oats box and it was awesome!  But something happened.  After a long time of not making meatloaf, I decided to make it again - and it didn't work.  I'm not sure what happened, but it just never came out the same as it used to... and I followed the directions perfectly (always a challenge for me).

I happen to love meatloaf.  For a while, I resorted to the Stouffer's or Publix frozen meatloafs, but they had too much salt and too much fat and I always wound up feeling slightly ill after eating them (though they were delicious).  One day, I moaned on FaceBook about how I made such awful meatloaf and really wanted to make good meatloaf and my friend Alison posted a very simple recipe.  I tried it and it was WONDERFUL!  And so simple.  I've made it many times since and raved about it to some co-workers.  The manager of the radio side of work came down to my office, having heard of this wonderful meatloat - she'd never even made meatloaf before.  She made it and her husband and son ate the whole thing.  This recipe has been passed around and around in my circles now and loved by everyone who's eaten it.

One evening, Alison and I went out to dinner and she laughed about the popular "Alison's Meatloaf"...  She said she got it off a box of soup mix!  We went on to talk about other things, but that stuck in my head.  The next time I bought onion soup mix, I looked at the box.  The recipe on there didn't even resemble the one Alison gave me.

I pondered this.  Perhaps they changed the recipe since Alison wrote it down.  Which made me wonder - is that what happened to MY meatloaf recipe?  Did Quaker change their recipe on the box and it really WASN'T the same???  Of course after all these years, it would be impossible to check and see but I suspect this might be the reason my last oatmal meatloaf was so bad that no one would eat it.

Thanks to Alison, though... I have this:

ALISON'S MEATLOAF

1 Lb. Ground Beef (lean) - I cheat here and use meatloaf mix.. you know.. the kind with pork too?
1 package dry onion soup mix
1/4 c. catsup
1 egg
1 piece of bread torn into tiny pieces
3 Tablespoons of water

 

Mix it all up and bake in 375 oven for 30 minutes. Yummy.