Mt. Pleasant Classical Academy

After PT this morning I jogged over to my local grocery store — OKAY, so I limped over and cried a little too from being pulled, and pushed, and prodded, and told to do 30 reps. and from being electrically zapped — but back to the grocery store run.

I always, always, always walk by the meat section of the grocery store cause you just never know what meats you will find there. Or better yet, what meats you will find on deep discount because they date expire today or tomorrow. This morning I couldn’t believe my find! Ground beef, and ground turkey, and sausage were all drastically reduced. YIPPY! I piled package after package into my grocery cart before heading over to pick up what I came into the store for; milk and bread. Boys seem to go through both those items very quickly.

Here’s my pile of ground beef, ground turkey, and sausage. Here are the prices I paid which, for our area are really good. Each package was about 1-1/2#, while the turkey was a little heavier.

Having found all three meat items I quickly decided to make meatloaf, and freeze them for dinners in the fall when time is tight. This is one of those things that I do—make dinner meat items when it isn’t hectic, so that when school life gets hectic we can still have a great meal with little prep time on my part.

Once home I pulled out a bunch of spices; chili powder, dry mustard, oregano, ketchup and poured a quantity into the bowl. Sorry, but when it comes to meat items I rarely measure out exactly what goes in. The quantity of each is my call and so my meatloaf is always a surprise but always quite good. Next a few eggs are cracked into the bowl, some oatmeal is added and finally I add in the meat. For this batch I put into this big bowl 5# beef, 3# turkey, 2# sausage and then mixed it up by hand.

You know it is mixed enough when the meat all looks the same color and you don’t see any bunches of spices. This still needs quite a bit more mixing.

Then I pulled out my scale and filled my bread pans with the meat mixture. The only reason I use the scale at this point is because DH likes to know how much meat is in the pan. The small ones each have 1#, the middle size each have 3#, while the largest holds a 5# meatloaf. I’ll be able to easily get 2 maybe even 3 dinners out of that large one, and we’ll have meatloaf sandwiches all week long. The 3# loafs will be two dinners and probable a sandwich or two for DH to take to work.

When we want meatloaf for dinner I’ll pull one of these baby’s out in the morning, let it defrost on the counter all day, and stick it in the oven for an hour at 350. We’ll have a salad, and other vegetables with it, and maybe some biscuits. I do not cook mashed potatoes and gravy. It isn’t that I don’t like it, but I like it way too much and could easily polish off a 5# batch of mashed potatoes and gravy. No kidding!

Since I ran out of bread pans I fixed the remainder of the meat mixture into 1/2# Salisbury Steak rolls. These will be frozen too and will be so simple to cook. Again, the morning that I want these for dinner I’ll take 4 out (one for each of us) and let them defrost on the counter all day. No, I don’t worry about bacteria growing in these as they defrost on the counter in a 62 degree house. Yes, that is really the temperature we keep our home when we have to turn on the heat. Otherwise our home is whatever temperature it is outside. But back to cooking Salisbury Steak, ummm. When I’m ready to cook them I’ll heat my electric skillet to 375, spray it with PAM, and put the logs in there to brown on each of their sides. While that’s going on I’ll open a Lipton Dried Onion Soup Mix, mix it with a cup of red wine and this mixture will go into the electric skillet, the lid will go on, and about 45 minutes later dinner will be ready.

See, MK is already dreaming about how wonderful these will taste for dinner. (Actually, he isn’t to sure he likes these ‘things’. And how do they taste? They smell great, but what’s the taste like Ma?”) LOL
And from the little preparation work I did this morning, for all of $30 plus the cost of 8 eggs, and a few spices I have dinner for us 4 for 15 dinner-times in the fall.