It’s so colorful!

We are in the freezer clean out phase seeing as we haven’t been shopping in a while. But this is a good thing. Instead of continually buying more meats and just throwing it into the freezer, we’re eating everything. Like a few days ago, I made him liver and onions. Note I said “him” as I didn’t touch it. Cleaning and cooking it was enough for me!

But anyhow. Last night I thawed out 2.5 pounds of hamburger meat thinking I’d make something with it. Instead we ended up going to our favorite new pizza place, Corrina’s, and picked up a few subs. So tonight, it’s all about that hamburger meat. And without a grill, what better way to utilize it than meatloaf?

As always, I use basic recipes online to make sure I’m cooking at the right temp, etc, but this recipe is totally made up as I go. Cuz that’s how I roll!

mmmmmMeatloaf
1 medium onion, diced
2-3 garlic cloves, minced
2 eggs
1 cup seasoned breadcrumbs
heavy shaking of desired spices – I used chili powder, pepper, and Lawry’s seasoning
2.5lbs hamburger meat
1 cup BBQ sauce
2 slices cheese
1 cup ketchup

Preheat oven to 350*

Mix everything together in a large bowl except for the ketchup and cheese until all ingredients are well distributed throughout the meat.

Still in the bowl, split the mixture into 4 roughly equal sizes.

Place 1/4 of the mixture into each of 2 loaf pans. You can also make these on a large baking pan free form. In that case, mush 1/4 of the mixture into 2 loaf shapes.

Cut the slices of cheese into halves and place 2 halves on top of each loaf.

Place the remaining 1/4 of the mixture atop each of the loaves and pinch together with the bottom so the cheese doesn’t spill out during cooking.

Top each loaf with ketchup. Place in the center of the oven and cook for 75 minutes or until center of each loaf is fully cooked.

Let sit in pan for about 5 minutes. Remove from pan, slice and serve with your favorite side dishes.

Enjoy!

oLooks delish, no?

So, the problem with going out of town for 4 days is trying to eat up all the food in the house the can potentially spoil while we’re gone. In our case, it was tons of fresh veggies. We pretty much leave all our meats in the freezer until we’re ready to use them, so that wasn’t an issue. There was a good deal of veggies we didn’t use and when we returned, it was starting to look a bit… peaky. So now what?

Enter Stir Fry!

There is absolutely nothing scientific or specific about a stir fry recipe. Seriously, grab every vegetable in your house, add some meat, chop it all up and saute in a huge frying pan or, if you have one, a wok.

In my case, our “recipe” was as follows:

1.5 lbs pork cut onto “thumb size” chunks
3 bunches broccoli
1/2 head of cauliflower
5-6 carrots
2 onions
4-5 cloves of garlic (to taste)
1 can water chestnuts
1 can baby corn
4-5 stalks celery
8 oz mushrooms
Corn oil
Brown sugar
Low sodium soy sauce
Rice or pasta

I chopped everything into bite size pieces in advance. This makes it way easier when dumping them all into the frying pan.

Heat up enough oil (your preference, I used corn oil) to cover the bottom of the frying pan. Throw the onions, carrots, celery, and garlic in to saute. When the onions look cooked “enough” to you, throw the pork chunks in to cook. Alternately, you could cook them separately, but I opted to cook them with the veggies to absorb all those delicious flavors.

At this point, my frying pan was too small. Good thing I have an electric wok within reach. Everything got tossed into the wok, along with the cauliflower, broccoli, baby corn, mushrooms and water chestnuts. I liberally shook the soy sauce over the entire mixture and put the lid on to simmer until the veggies are cooked to your liking.

My secret ingredient is to sprinkle brown sugar over the mixture just before serving. It makes the entire thing both savoy and sweet.

Serve over rice or pasta.

Enjoy your creation!