30 Day Cooking Challenge (Day 1)

This blog was a dead-ender from the start, so I'm resurrecting it.
Among a handful, there are a couple things I've been slacking off from. Blogging (or journaling) and cooking. You see, we moved back to Idaho a couple of weeks ago and it is COLD. Everyone knows you can't motivate me by freezing me, so I've been off to a slow start with housework and meal preparations. All I want to do is hide under a blanket with a space heater. (Actually as I write this, I'm wrapped in a blanket with the space heater blasting at my feet. Our apartment has no heating system.)
Anyway, I needed something to get me on my numb feet and making progress. I have nothing going on in my life. My senior year of college starts in less than two months, and I'm waiting to hear back for a job that wouldn't start until school does. So I have A LOT of free time. I really enjoy cooking. I'm not bad in the kitchen and I have a husband who, not only will eat everything, but will compliment anything I put in front of him. I decided to volunteer myself for a 30 Day Cooking Challenge. I found a cookbook that I received for a wedding gift, but I tucked it in a cupboard for a year. For some reason I prefer scoping recipes on the Internet. But I rediscovered this little treasure and found a lot of recipes that Rory would love. Here is how the challenge will work:

It's very simple: Everyday I will pull a recipe from the cookbook. I HAVE to cook a from-scratch dinner every other night. It would be nice to make a dip, breakfast or dessert on my non-dinner days. We'll see if I can do that. So it's not really a challenge, but whatever.
Why? We're a little on the, um, poor side. We can't afford going out to dinner on a regular basis. When we do, we find ourselves slipping financially. It turns out that home-cooked meals are more affordable, you can eat the left-overs, and use the left-over ingredients for other meals. So with this challenge, we will not go out to eat except for ice cream, because I don't want to give that up.

Here is the book that I will use as a staple for this challenge:

Home Cookin' is by Kelley Van Orden Dalley
The book includes recipes for just about everything from spinach dip to casseroles to pizza to red velvet cake to window cleaner.

TODAY November 12 I will start with meat loaf. The only time I've had meatloaf was at 6th grade camp. I remember liking it. It seems like one of those classic American dishes and it should be easy to start the challenge with.

THE RECIPE
2 eggs
1/2 cup dried bread crumbs or Ritz crackers
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground sage
1/4 cup ketchup
1 tsp. dry mustard
3/4 cups milk
1/4 cup onions
11/2 pounds lean hamburger
2 tbsp brown sugar
MIX together ketchup, brown sugar and mustard. Set aside. Mix together all other ingredients and put in a greased breadpan. Cover with ketchup mixture. Bake at 350 for 50 minutes.



UPDATE for this post. The outcome of the meatloaf.

I got off to a bad start because after I finished writing the first part of the post, I went to the grocery store, but I discovered a flat tire on my car :( There are two grocery stores so I had to walk to the closer one.
At the store I discovered dry mustard is $4. That seemed to be a little too pricey for a spice I wouldn't use very often so I skipped it. The dry mustard was to be used for a glaze to pour over the raw meatloaf before putting it in the oven. I substituted the dry mustard for barbeque sauce to give it a kick.

This is the glaze (ketchup, brown sugar and dry mustard...or barbeque sauce in my case.)

Add the rest of the ingredients in a large mixing bowl and stir it together. It will look gross, but that's okay. (Somehow this picture got flipped. Oh well.

Transfer the raw meatloaf from the large mixing bowl to a greased bread pan. Pour the glaze on top.

Your finished meatloaf.

Here are some things I would suggest: Bake it for an hour instead of 50 minutes. My meatloaf was still considerably pink inside after baking for 50 minutes. It wasn't raw, but it wasn't completely done. Rory didn't care, but if you're like me and pink meat makes you nervous, keep it baking longer. Serve it with broccoli and mashed potatoes. Voila, you have an all-American meal.

Rating:
Taste: 9. It was really good! It was really moist (I used a 15% fat hamburger) and had a hint of sweetness from the brown sugar. Next time I would add bell peppers to make it less beefy.
Simplicity: 8. This was really easy to make. I had every ingredient in my kitchen except for the beef and ketchup, so it's something you can whip up pretty easily. The only thing is it takes awhile to bake, and longer than I expected since it wasn't completely done.
Overall: I really liked this meal and it is great for a middle-of-the-week dinner when you don't have time to go all out prepping a meal. The long bake time comes in handy if you're a student, then you can do some homework or housework while you wait. If you're not a student then you can make your sides in the meantime.