One of the most common cool weather meals is a meat loaf.  What carnivore diner cannot love what is essentially a great big Hamburger patty.  Spicing and finishing can make this an exotic dining experience but it remains a basic food.

Over the many years, Pat has made some great meat loaves and I have enjoyed each and every one.  I have assisted in the production of this great repast, but up until now I have never been the prime chef.

When I retired, one of the gifts was a subscription to Fine Dining magasine given by my good friend Stacey Schwartz.  She knew my love of cooking and we had shared many recipes before.

Every now and then the magasine does a step by step process with photos on how to do a basic recipe.  They did one recently on meat loaf. 

It is not a recipe it is an instruction on how to make your own recipe it just lays out the production steps and ingreditant options for each step.  For example it calls for 2 lbs of ground meat but gives 8 options on how to make up the 2 lbs.  Then a cup of chopped vegetables (from a list of 10)  then the spicing options and the flavour options but all leading to a meat loaf at the end.  I expect the options would lead to 1000 different recipes but all lead to success.

Now I go through this detail because Pat is away and I am finished the model and I finished the yard work, so now I can spend an entire afternoon making a meal. (for one person)  A great meal with soup to begin, meatloaf and perogies (sauted in onions and bacon)  for the entree.  I expect if Pat ever left me forever I would weigh 300 lbs in no time. 

In the end I had a meat loaf that would feed 8 people so I will freeze half and use the rest for leftovers.  But it was a pretty meatloaf and tasted fantastic.