My older son requested meatloaf for his birthday dinner. I have tried to blog about meatloaf before, but never successfully. There are reasons for this.

1. The recipe we love is so basic that I feel kind of sheepish.
2. All my fancy meatloaf experimentation has yielded non-inspirational results.
3. I don’t make meatloaf that often because it’s a lot of meat.
4. Meatloaf photos are kind of gross.

But then my son requested it and the whole family was so excited so I decided to just buck up and share the recipe because we totally love it and that ought to be enough reason, right? The only problem: I never got a photo of the finished meatloaf. By the time it finished baking, we were in festive-meal chaos mode and I forgot.

When I realized my mistake, all but one nub of loaf had already disappeared down the hatch, and then that last nub was gone, too. You’re not missing much, though. Just imagine a long log of cooked ground beef, the bottom of the baking dish covered with a film of juicy fat. Really, not impressive. But it sure is delicious!

Meatloaf
Adapted from the Mennonite Community Cookbook, by Mary Emma Showalter.

The original recipe calls for capping the meatloaf with raw bacon pre-baking, but I skip that step. To serve the meatloaf, I remove it from the yuck-looking baking dish and place it on a clean plate. Then I slice the loaf to facilitate the serving process and to limit the kids from going hogwild.

For Birthday Boy’s dinner, I served the meat loaf with these outrageously delicious potatoes cooked in cream (as well as corn and green beans and sourdough bread and shoofly pie with ice cream): a killer combo.

1 onion, chopped
1 cup of bread crumbs
2 egg, lightly beaten
1 generous cup milk (or tomato juice)
2 teaspoons salt
½ teaspoon black pepper
2 pounds ground beef

Combine everything but the ground beef and let sit for 15 minutes to soften. Add the ground beef and stir to combine (I use my hands). Put the mixture in a 9 x 13 baking dish and shape into a loaf. Do not pack the meat. Bake at 375 degrees for 50-60 minutes. Slice and eat. Serve with ketchup.

With the leftovers: make a sandwich of thinly sliced meatloaf, mayonnaise, spicy mustard, and lots of sweet pickles.

This same time, years previous: when your child can’t read, the quotidian (11.4.13), the nighttime barkies, piano lessons, laid flat, lemon squares, and living history.

This year’s garden was fairly low-key and non-stress, which made for a pleasant break from our normal Summer Crazy.

Stats:
rhubarb daiquiri mix, frozen: 2 batches (three little jars)
strawberries, frozen, sliced: 17 quarts
sour cherries from our trees, frozen: 8½ quarts
red raspberries, frozen: 14 quarts
zucchini relish: 13 pints
sweet pickles: 8 quarts
apricot jam, runny, canned: 6½ pints
wineberries, foraged, frozen: 2½ quarts
green peppers, cooked, frozen: 13 half-pints
blackberries, foraged, frozen: 3 cups
tomatoes, canned: 43 quarts, 3 pints
pesto, walnut-butter, frozen: about 8 half-pints
corn: 29 quarts and 18 pints
roasted tomato and garlic pizza sauce: 35½ pints
peaches, canned: 25 quarts
nectarines, dried: 17 bags (each bag roughly equaled 1½ pints)
pesto torte, 2 recipes, frozen: 16 slices
roasted tomato sauce, canned: 12 pints
sweet potatoes: 1 bushel

Notes:
*Planting an entire row of cucumbers was slightly insane. We gave away bushels.
*Same for seven zucchinis. But they were lovely and the plants refused to die!
*FYI: 45 dozen ears of corn yields about 80 quarts of corn. (We shared with fellow corn processors.)
*The family is crazy about the pesto torte. Make at least two batches every year, please.
*No grapes this year because my husband pruned them too vigorously. Thankfully, we still have jam from 2014.
*The red raspberries weren’t that great. Remember to fertilize (and only chop them back to about one-foot high) them in February.
*We got apricots and pears and cherries! If we remember to spray next year, we’d get a lot more!
*The strawberry crop was underwhelming. Hopefully, that’s because it’s the first year of production.
*Five pepper plants is a good amount.
*For some odd reason, the basil died halfway through the season. Plant them by the rhubarb next year to see if they do better.
*We have no tomato juice and I miss it. Don’t forget to make some next year.
*Besides not doing green beans (oodles still in the freezer or potatoes (so buggy last year that it’s not worth the trouble), we also did not put up applesauce or salsa. We aren’t going through nearly as much applesauce as we used to, and we still had plenty of salsa (which we love) from the year before.

This same time, years previous: chatty time, posing for candy, cheesy broccoli potato soup, why I’m spacey, sweet and sour lentils, Greek yogurt, oatmeal bread, and blessing hearts.

Listening…
My husband gave me an Ipod nano for my birthday. I was sick of always having to shut off NPR whenever any kids wandered into the kitchen/downstairs area—approximately every 3.4 seconds—not because I didn’t want them to hear NPR but because I can’t handle competing noises, which is funny because my children don’t take turns when they talk so you’d think I’d be used to it by now.

Anyway. Whenever I wanted to hear a podcast, I’d have to play it on the computer which involved navigating speakers and cords and then having a screen in the kitchen always drawing my eye when I just wanted to listen and cook without any pixelated distractions, and still, there was that same old problem of kid interruptions, plus some of the podcasts weren’t fitting for young ears, so I’d end up doing lots of deep sighing and dashing across the kitchen to hit the pause button.

(Actually, even with the Ipod, I still do a lot of sighing and hitting of the pause button because the kids can’t stand seeing me with earbuds stuffed in my ear holes, but at least there are no screens involved and no one else has to hear what I’m listening to.)

The Moth: fabulous storytelling that make for satisfying entertainment anytime. The older children enjoy them, too.

Fresh Air because Terry Gross is awesome.

Limetown: a fictional mystery told a la Serial. My older daughter loves this one (because I let her listen after me). When the story gets tense, she stops whatever she’s doing and just stands there, frozen.

This American Life.

Real Education Podcast: Blake Boles interviews a wide variety of people about their alternative education beliefs, experiences, and practices. Highly (highly! highly! highly!) recommend the interview with Kenneth Danford on Thriving Without School and the interview with Carsi Blanton on Unschooling. (I made both my husband and son listen to the latter one.)

Watching… 
Everest: my husband and I went to see this on his birthday. It was eerie to watch such an intense movie while having him whisper in my ear, I was in that village, or I landed on that runway, or Our helicopter was in worse shape than that one. Back home I announced to the children that they were never, under any circumstances, permitted to climb Mt. Everest. PERIOD.

Spare Parts: our most recent family night movie (from Redbox) about a high school robotics club that beats MIT. All four kids were engaged so it counted as a winner.

The Martian: both older kids saw it in the theater with their mentors and thoroughly enjoyed it.

The Newsroom: a show that my husband will watch with me! Much less glitz than most shows, and heavy on the news (obviously). Republican news anchor Will McAvoy’s rant in the very first show is pretty awesome. Through Amazon Prime.

How The States Got Their Shapes: a pleasant way to get a grip on US geography. The only difficulty is finding time to watch it when everyone is home, including Papa. Through Netflix streaming. 

Reading… 
I inhaled my Aunt’s new cookbook (!!!), Baking With Whole Grains: Recipes, Trips, and Tricks for Baking Cookies, Cakes, Scones, Pies, Pizza, Breads, and More! This is the same auntie who gave us our recipe for salsa and blueberry bars.

Check it out, y’all. The woman knows her way around a wheat field and a kitchen.

11/22/63 by Stephen King. My very first King read and the experience was not traumatic! And then I bought The Eyes of the Dragon because the reviews said it’s a good read for young teens and adults alike. Currently, my husband is in its clutches.

On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King. I read the library’s copy and then ordered my own from Amazon because it’s amazing and because I want my older son to read it this year. King is fascinating.

Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott. This is my selection for our next book club meeting so I recently skimmed it in preparation for our gathering. (Current dilemma: to serve pie or scones or something else altogether….)

The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White. Ordered from Amazon because King wouldn’t shut up about it. It’s next up on my reading list (and it will be assigned reading for my older son, as well).

Crash-Proof Your Kids: Make Your Teen a Safer, Smarter Driver by Timothy C. Smith. Despite hating the title (sounds way too much like helicopter parenting and it contained a typo which does not inspire confidence), I ordered this one because my sister-in-law told me to. In a household bursting with new, and soon-to-be-new drivers, it’s a fitting book to have laying around. The kids find it quite interesting. Even the nine-year-old has taken to reading sections out loud just because.

Why Not Me? by Mindy Kaling. A breezy read.

Holes by Louis Sacher. This is what I’m reading out loud to the children. The younger two don’t remember it, and my older daughter and husband are enjoying the repeat performance. (My son is excused to read other stuff since this book is way too familiar to him.) Also, at the kids’ urging we’ve been reading some Edgar Allen Poe. It is October after all.

What the kids are reading: 
Older son: Into Thin Air by John Krakauer.
Older daughter: Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand.
Younger daughter: anything from The Dork Diaries by Rachel Renee Russell.
Younger son: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling.

What are you watching, listening to, and reading right now? Inspire me!

This same time, years previous: the business of school, the quotidian (10.29.12), how to bake a pie on the stovetop, and Go Obama!.