Meatloaf... exciting stuff, huh?

This is gonna be dull. Thought I'd warn ya'll in advance. Just not a lot exciting going on right now.

By now, you should know that I have found a love for cooking, and that I like to try new things. It's fairly rare that we have things over and over. Unless you count meatloaf. We have it about once a week. I love it. It's one of my favorite meals.

But when it comes to my meatloaf, I'm a simple person. I rarely eat it anywhere but home, because a lot of people try to jazz it up with bell pepper and all sorts of things. I dated a girl one time that mixed so much ketchup in hers that it always ended up bright red. She liked it that way. That's how her Mama made it. But not me. I like it plain and simple. Some salt, peppers, a little onion, and a dash of Moore's. If I get crazy I may add an egg. (By the way, be careful with the egg. You know on the Food Network when they tell you to always crack your egg over a bowl instead of over your dish? Well pay attention to that. I once had 3 pounds of very lean ground beef in a bowl and when I cracked the egg it was green inside and I had to throw it all out and start over. The smell was atrocious too! And I had just bought the eggs at Publix! Who would've expected a bad one?)

Let me break in here and share a little story with ya'll. When Heather and I first started dating, she was going to cook supper for me one night. She knew of my love for meatloaf, so she decided to impress me with her own version. Back then, whenever Heather would cook anything, she'd open up the cabinet and just start grabbing things until she had a minimum of 7 random spices added to whatever dish she was making. This did not always have the desired results. In fact, that leads us back to that fateful first meatloaf.

So Heather had cooked that night, and it actually tasted good. I think I had seconds. Then we were going to watch a movie and chill out. Well about half way through the movie, I started feeling funny. The feeling progressed pretty quickly and before I knew it, I was puking my guts up in the toilet. I was sick as a dog! I stayed sick all night! And I don't think she had ever made meatloaf again.

But back to my story....

So this weekend I broke my own rule and tried a new meatloaf. I found it somewhere on the internet, and it called for sundried tomatoes. Sounded pretty good to me, because otherwise it was a simple recipe.

The recipe said to drain the oil out of the jar of tomatoes into a skillet, and then to cook a cup of chopped onions in that oil. Who knew that onions cooking in sundried tomato infused olive oil could smell so bad. It was almost as bad as the green egg. (Not really though....)

I kept moving forward with the recipe though. Even though I was concerned about ruining another bowl full of hamburger meat. I mixed everything together and ended up with so much that I had to make 2 loaves. As they baked, the smell got much better and even started smelling really good! When Heather came home she said it smelled incredible.

We sliced it up.

I could taste the aftertaste of the tomatoes, but just faintly. It grew on me. But not a whole lot. Heather asked if it was really a new recipe because she couldn't tell the difference. I could tell a difference for sure. She had lots of ketchup on hers and I think that masked the taste. We ate half of one and have another whole one and a half in the fridge. So we've got to learn to like it. It's not so bad with ketchup.

That jar of tomatoes was almost $6.00. I think I'll stick with what I know from now on.