World's Second Best Meatloaf

The World's Best is from the New York Times,  We had the second best this week.  I pubbed the recipe before. Meatloaf with Kickass Topping.  

We ate it again this week and it was soooo good.  Changes to the original recipe:  Bread crumbs made from stale baguette soaked in a little milk, and a wee bit of parsley from the garden.  It was still wonderful and we ate the rest in sandwiches for lunch.  I think I like meatloaf sandwiches (cold) as well as meatloaf fresh out of the oven, but it's really a toss up.   I baked potatoes with the meatloaf, and we had them with all the trimmings:  bacon bits, snipped chives from the garden, sour cream and whipped butter.  Plenty of salt and pepper.  I always choose a pretty small potato, but Significant Other opts for a king sized one.  Green beans and salad round out the meal.

 We only eat this a few times a year and I always buy the ground beef (ground daily) at the butcher counter.  I would no more dream of making this with turkey than with octopus.  Sometimes ya just gotta each beef.  Lots of zinc and b-vitamins as well as protein and well, flavor.

The garden is about gone.  Age the last ripe tomato and the last cuke yesterday.  Two more little green tomatoes is all she wrote.  Pulled up the cucumber vines and made pesto from the basil plants.  Parsley about gone, from us.  Lots of mint and rosemary and sage and also oregano.  Must remember to bring the oregano in.  In never lives all winter, but hope does spring eternal.  I have to take cuttings from the coleus and cut the geraniums back and bring them in, too.  Fall chores are about the same as spring chores, without the payoff of color and good eats. 

I think the hummingbirds have migrated.  Can't decide whether to put out one more batch of nectar.  The little birds need to stoke up for their long journey.  It hurts my heart to think of them flying over the Gulf of Mexico during hurricane season.  How do they make it and return to our yard and feeder year by year? 

Flocks of blackbirds massing in the treetops.  Cat is intrigued. 

The cleomes that reseeded themselves are still blooming.  What with the geraniums, coleus, and cleomes, I spent very little on flowers this year.  Trade with friends.  Gardens are for sharing.

The Cheeseparer

Post-Irene Food

We were whomped by Hurricane Irene.  Had made the usual prep of cooking up a couple ahead-of-time meals, and checking all the flashlights and lanterns for working batteries.  Got out the old hurricane lantern (aptly named) and filled it with lamp oil, checked the wick (new).  Put out bird food and forgot to bring in the Hummingbird feeder.

Sunday, the wind began rising at 6:30 a.m.  I got up and made a batch of pesto Geneovese (using blender) using basil picked from garden the day before.  Ran the dishwasher.  Laundry all done on Saturday.  Hunkering down.  We were watching CNN at 10:30 when the lights went out.  They came back on Wednesday evening.  In the meantime, everything in the freezers (2 fridges) had defrosted.  We ate the prepared meal by candle light on Sunday, and Monday we grilled the thawed steak as shish kebabs.  Delicous.  Ate them twice.   I cooked A LOT of defrosted chicken breasts and we had chicken pesto and also chicken parm without sauce.   The only foods ruined were a pizza that melting ice had leaked into (el disgusto) and some leftovers that I was just as happy to pitch.  Fed the once-frozen bananas, saved for banana bread, to the cows.

We have a gas stove that can be lit with a match with the electric ignition  doesn't work and a gas water heater, so we were among the lucky ones.  Those with their own wells or an all-electric (or oil) house took cold showers and went for takeout.  In 1985, during Gloria, we were among those, and cooked on a one-burner camp stove and the Weber Kettle.   One can actually do with less, dontchaknow?

A huge oak fell across the wild flower garden (boo hoo) and I won't know how bad the damage is until it is removed.  Hoping the removal doesn't do more damage than the tree falling.

During the storm, the hummingbirds swooped and flew and appeared to be having a high old time.  They drained their feeder which had no damage.   The other birds found their old feeders about four feet nearer the ground and of course some enterprising creature dragged the suet feeder off.  We have another one, which the raccoons raid often, but we have large families of flickers, downy and hairy woodpeckers, all with babies, so we try to keep the suet coming.

It is nice to have a clean fridge, and the Highland Scottish cattle received some of the contents of the freezer such as old bread and a huge package of flour tortillas (ick!) that someone left here.

I made some peach ice cream a few days ago.  Lots and lots of peaches.  We ate the  remainder of the ice cream for lunch as soon as the lights went out.   So our losses were minimal.

Now we are eating up last fall's winter stores:  Spam, tuna fish and corned beef hash.  I'll replace them in a couple of months.  The Low Salt Spam was totally delicious.  We ate it with baked beans gussied up with onion, tomato, and bacon last night.

So yours truly is feeling pretty frugal and with the power out went to the discount Tuesday movie, The Help, and the first run non-discounted movie, The Debt, both pretty good.  Only missed one Red Sox game.   We had a battery powered radio.  You are ready for a big storm, aren't you?  Having light, batteries, radio, food and emergency supplies can make all the difference.

Oddly enough, the cats were kind of freaked out by the experience, and did not spend any time in the dark basement home office but came upstairs to bask in the lamplight.  I washed the dishes as we used them, and drained them on a towel on the counter.  Worked fine.  First thing I did when the power came back on was run the dishwasher.  Yay!

We are eating a lot of cucumber salad, as the garden has an abundance of cukes.  Cukes and basil are the current harvest.  Ate all the lettuce.  Also have a huge supply of oregano, which I will dry and sage, which hangs around until the coldest part of the winter.

Onward, onward.  After the lights came back on, we had a day of respite and then the Internet crapped out for 4 days.  8 of 9 days with poor or no Internet.  We did get wi-fi at the neighboring  library and Starbucks when the power was out in our town.   So:  the tree didn't hit the house, we coped pretty well and consider ourselves lucky.

The Cheeseparer