Wow, check out the piece of meat on the cover of this cookbook. Appetizing, huh?  It is no surprise that this is the cookbook that I chose the Mid-Century Menu out of this week.  It is 250 Ways to Prepare Meat by the Culinary Arts Institute, published in 1942. This is a great cookbook, because every single way you could think of to make any kind of mid-century meat is in this book. Even some ways that you normally would NEVER think of!!  Pork roast rolled with hot dogs, anyone??

Besides this great book, I was also excited because my parents are visiting from Wisconsin right now, so we have guests for the menu.  Pretty sweet, huh?  My dad didn’t seem that excited, but my mom rolled up her sleeves and pitched right in and helped me make the menu.  It was a blast.

“So,”  my mom said, “What are we having?

“Umm…meatloaf ring with creamed mushrooms.”

“Ewwww…sounds great!”

The ingredients.  Pretty simple, even for a meatloaf!

There’s my mom cracking the eggs!  I took a full length picture of her, too, but she was tired from her trip and didn’t want me to post the photo. 🙂  I will just keep it and use it for blackmail some other time…

Diced onions, all ready for the bowl.

The pork and the beef.  I accidentally mixed up the portions when I ordered them at the butcher shop, but they still added up to three pounds total, so I figured it was no big deal.  I would just roll with it.

Check out all the horseradish!!!!

“This says a half a cup of horseradish!”  My mom was horrified.

“Okay, so put it in,” I said.

“We can’t put it in, it will taste horrible. Let’s just put in half.”

I shook my head. “That’s not how the menu works, Mom, you have to do what the recipe says no matter what.  Throw it in the bowl!”

“This is ridiculous.  It is going to taste awful.”

Ahhh…the joys of mid-century recipes. 🙂

Adding the pepper, with my mom manning the camera.

Eww..meat hands!  You know, I wouldn’t mind mixing meatloaf with my hands if it wasn’t so darn cold! Gah!

Ketchup in the bottom of the mold, courtesty of my mother.

Here it is, all packed into the ring.  It didn’t quite fit, but we jammed it all in there anyway and hoped for the best. I will have to keep my eye out for a bigger ring mold at Goodwill.

Ta-Da!! Here it is, fresh from the oven.  We had a little bit of spilling, but that is what the pizza pan is for.

It was the fattiest meatloaf ever!  Look at the fat at the bottom of this bowl.  Oh, and thanks goes to my mom for this one, otherwise it would have been a picture of me at the emergency room.  She suggested draining the hot fat off BEFORE trying to unmold the meatloaf.  Good call!

The finished loaf! Mom thought this was a cute picture, and made me post it even though I am wearing scrub clothes with no make-up on.  Ah, the things we do for family!

Filled with the creamed mushrooms….kind of.  I don’t know why I thought the creamed mushrooms would stay in the center, even if it would have been flat on the bottom they still would have spilled out when it was cut.  Thanks to Tom’s quick thinking, a pan saved the day and my floor from being covered with mushroom mush.

The first bite…and…

My dad’s reaction shot!

“So Dad,”  I said, “How is it??”

“Not bad. How much horseradish is in here?”

“A half a cup!”  Now my mom was proud of it.

“You can’t taste it,” Tom said, “it is pretty good.”

I took a bite.  They were right, you couldn’t really taste any heat from the horseradish, but you could still taste the flavor. The meatloaf was really dense, since there was no filler of any kind, but the flavor was good.  We even liked the creamed mushrooms!

“Not so bad, Dad, huh? Worth driving 8 hours for?” 

He shook his head, smiling.  “I don’t know, let’s see how Thanksgiving dinner turns out.”

The Verdict: Good, the heat of the horseradish was toned down by the baking. We even liked the mushrooms!

I almost forgot, we had gingerbread cupcakes for dessert.  Yum!