Sunday, Beginning and End

Sunday morning (late morning, anyway) started with a repeat of my open-faced bagel sandwiches, with shredded cheddar since we were out of slices.  This is ridiculously satisfying…I wish I had a picture of the wonderfully running yolk after you cut into the middle of the bagel! Next time I will get one!

I surprised Matt with a side for our bagel….cinnamon apples! YUM! I’ve never made these before, but I have a bunch of apples left in the fridge and felt like we needed some fruit to kick start our day.  Very very easy to make:

• Chop 2 apples into 16 pieces each (8 wedges, each cut in half)
• Toss in a small pan with about 1/2 cup of apple juice, 1 Tablespoon brown sugar, 1 teaspoon granulated sugar, and cinnamon to taste.
• Boil the hell out of them until they are soft and gooey.  If you like your apples more firm, decrease the apple juice, more soft, increase it!

yum yum yum yum yummmm!

We ran errands, splurged on some soft pretzels in the middle of the day, and then came home to make some delicious comfort food for dinner!

Sweet & Spicy Pepper Meatloaf

This recipe was adapted from Alton Brown’s Good Eats Meatloaf, and changed up based on what we had in the apartment.  When my mom makes meatloaf, there is a disgusting layer of grease that builds up around/on top of the meat that then gets drained off…it has always dissuaded me from making meatloaf.  When I came across this recipe, which avoids that problem for the most part, I was thrilled!

What you need:

• 3 oz crackers
• pepper
• cayenne
• chili powder
• dry thyme
• 1/2 an onion
• 1/2 cup chopped red bell pepper
• 1.5 lbs ground beef
• salt
• 1 egg
• 1/4 cup ketchup
• cumin
• Worcestershire sauce
• hot sauce
• honey

What you do:

• Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
• Pulse cracker, pepper, cayenne, chili powder and dry thyme in a food processor until fine and add to beef.
• Pulse onion and red pepper in food processor to a fine chop and add to the bowl. This made a gorgeous orange/red mix!
• Combine the cracker mixture, onion mixture and ground beef with salt and egg until well mixed, but not overworked. 

• Press mixture into loaf pan(s).  We used a mini loaf pan and got three loaves out of it.  This is a great way to make loaves to freeze and reheat later!  You can also do it in one large pan.
• On a parchment-lined baking sheet, turn the molded loaves out and bake for 10 minutes.

• Combine ketchup, cumin, Worcestershire, hot sauce and honey.
• After 10 minutes, brush glaze on loaves and return to oven.

• Bake until internal temperature reaches 155 degrees.  For our mini-loaves this took about 20-30 more minutes. 
• Remove from oven and let rest for a couple minutes, then place on paper towel-lined plate to remove some of  the grease from the bottom.
• Slice and serve!

We served with Parmesan Red Mashers (baby red potatoes mashed with a bit of parmesan, a tiny bit of cream, a pat of butter, salt and pepper) and my Creamy Bacon Brussels Sprouts.  This is one of my absolutely most favorite veggie side dishes, and a stellar example of how bacon makes the world a better place.

We were in major food coma state after dinner, but we relaxed, watch a movie and were completely satisfied with our comfort food for the weekend!

This entry was posted on Monday, April 27th, 2009 at 6:23 pm and is filed under Blog Fun, Family, Fun, Leftovers, Magical Magical Animal, Matthew, Yum. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.