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

Seasonal Meals with Pork and Cranberries

Autumn in New England cries for pork.  We made this recipe last night, and it was yummy.  I had originally bought port wine (not the finest, but not the cheapest, either) for some Port Wine Ice Cream that was out of this world, a very sophisticated dessert.  We tend not to sip port after dinner, dunno why.
 Anyway, the port sat around and I ran across this recipe in my clippings. Tried it last night.  Walmart had canned cranberries on sale, the sauce, not the jelly, and I served it with green beans and mushrooms and mashed potatoes.  Very satisfying now that it's dark before five and the nights and long and cold.

Pork Chops with Cranberry, Port and Rosemary Sauce

I bring the rosemary in from the garden in the fall and snip it all winter until it goes out in the spring or dies indoors.  It likes to be snipped.  The garden chores are never ending.  Yesterday it was pull up the frost-dead annuals and scrub out the pots.  I have to replant my 2 thymes, plant garlic and daffodils.  Oh, why did I get so ambitious and order stuff.  Now it's cold and damp and only the orange cat likes to be outside, and he isn't gonna plant nothing. 


Our supermarket has pork chops on sale, nice thick boneless ones, that cost about a dollar each.  Personally, I like a bone in mine for added flavor, but bone-in chops are getting hard to find.  How lazy is that?