Winter 2013-14

So post christmas, with all the action and festivities behind us, with new year resolutions already broken and Toronto in a deep freeze for a while now, I am turning to one resolution to update this blog at least once a month with a favourite recipe and a little bit about what's going on in our lives so that I can look back and reflect and savour the past. We had an ice storm in December that cut off electricity to 300,000 families in Ontario. We headed to June's house for a sleepover and boy, were they glad that we did not have electricity and came over to spend some much overdue time with them. We sat up late that night talking, laughing and playing games with some of Gavin's and Karen's freinds..it was so much fun that we were almost heartbroken when we had to leave the house of the folks with big hearts. But Christmas was in 2 days and we still had not bought gifts for all all the folks on our list, so we left. I made meatloaf (recipe below ) the very versatile, easy-peasy dish when I got home so that we could better use our time getting ready for Christmas. The beauty of the frozen landscape was mind-blowing. Here are some pictures.

Meatloaf Recipe  

(Adapted from Janet Caldwell's recipe posted on Allrecipes.com) 

No-fail meatloaf calls for ground beef, onions, egg, milk, and bread. It is topped with a mix of brown sugar, mustard, and ketchup before baking."

 Ingredients: 
1 1/2 pounds ground beef 
1 egg (I used 2 eggs)  
1 onion, chopped (sauteed onions and 3 cloves of garlic in one tbsp of butter)  
1 cup milk
1 cup dried bread crumbs (I put Italian herbed breadcrumbs)
salt and pepper to taste   

2 tablespoons brown sugar 
2 tablespoons prepared mustard (I added 3 tbsps mustard)  
1/3 cup ketchup (I used 3/4 cup ketchup)  

Directions: 1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). 

2. In a large bowl, combine the beef, egg, sauteed onion and garlic, milk and breadcrumbs. Season with salt and pepper to taste and place in a lightly greased 5x9 inch loaf pan, I had some left overs which i pressed into mini muffin tin. Perfect for packing school lunches. 

3. In a separate small bowl, combine the brown sugar, mustard and ketchup. Mix well and pour over the meatloaf. What I changed here was I put 1-2 tablespoons of sauce on the bottom of the pan, topped it with half of meat mixture, put some more sauce approx. 1-2 tbsps and put another layer of meat with sauce on top. 

4. Bake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for 45 mins (covered for 1/2 hr and then removed the cover and baked for another 15 minutes) 

**My changes are in red.