I became inspired to do meatloaf, and discovered the tomatoes in the pantry expired in 2011. Now, usually stuff isn’t really bad until the can swells, but, y’know, why risk it? Those went out.
The corn flakes were all gone.
There were no veggies.
I decided, well, pasta. Pasta would work as a binder. I had an egg. Also a binder. Spices, no problem. And I discovered unexpired spaghetti sauce. Voila! Tomato!
So I stirred it up, dumped in a cup of dry penne pasta, and added a measure of water, in the theory, well, the pasta needed something to grow on.
Baked at 350 for an hour and a half…covered in foil—worked like a charm. It wasn’t my best meat loaf ever: that would have had diced tomatoes, diced bell pepper, and sufficient chili sauce (I did have some, expiration 2013, well, close enough. 😉 So I used it.) And it would have had carrots and potatoes.
But it was still good. Half of it will be Sunday dinner.
Chef Ramsey would be proud—at least of my ability to punt.
We do something like that; we call it spaghetti pie, but I think ours has more fattening cheese on it. Mmmmm, cheese… *drool*
Certainly interesting. You can have tomatoes? I had a feeling the nightshades don’t treat you well. Still, that sounds like a goulash I had the other night, although mine wasn’t in loaf form.
I can have tomatoes and potatoes about once a week, with mild effect like joint pain and stiffness. I don’t like to stop eating them, for fear I will lose the ability to eat them. Peppers seem ok, so it’s far from as bad an allergy as I have to the lily family.
A life without garlic doesn’t bear thinking about. [shudder]
BTW, Meatloaf is much better if it’s 20% pork sausage! 😉
When I visited a dietitian, she told me to watch out for green garden peas, corn, and rice. I asked her about sugar snap peas, and she said I could have all I wanted….sounded strange, especially since the sugar snaps are so sweet-tasting. She also said 1/2 cup of cooked rice is it….:( when I have a stir-fry, I want a little more rice than 1/2 cup…..especially since the stir-fry involves about 4 ounces of chicken breast and a ton of frozen vegetables. If I could eliminate the sauces that they mix in with the stir-fry vegetables, I can make my own….but it would entail buying multiple packages of vegetables and having them open, even with twist ties to close them. I used to use the ones that had broccoli, carrots, and cauliflower, or water chestnuts, or something else, without sauce. AND I can flame them up as much as I want with the peppers….made a mistake last time, went to shake some garlic powder into the mix, and had the wrong side of the cap open….instead of a teaspoon or so, I got a couple of tablespoonsful….oh well, it wasn’t as bad as I thought….but you wouldn’t have wanted to get too close to me for a few hours. 😀
I’ve given up on white rice and have only brown or a yummy mix of brown rice, red rice, rye and barley that is sold as Royal Blend by the RiceSelect people. Their grains come in jars and they have a really nice variety of both regular and organic.
I’ve found the best no-fail way of cooking brown rice is to bake it. Alton Brown has an easy recipe. I just bag it up in smaller quantities and freeze for later use.
Thanks, Tulrose, I’ll look for that rice blend.
“Red rice?”
That reminds me to use a box of barley I have in the pantry. I’d bought it for soup or stew.
For meat loaf, my grandmother and my mother would’ve used brown (wheat) bread or crushed saltine crackers along with the egg as a binder. I may try it with a can of mild Ro-Tel chilis and tomatoes. The hot might even be OK for a meatloaf.
Here’s my grandmother’s and mother’s recipe. It’s (I think) Depression ere, geared for a cheap budget.
http://www.shinyfiction.com/recipes/chapMainDish/meatloaf-tomatoey.htm
For stir-fry, I tend to use any of the packages of frozen veggies for stir-fry, especially the one with edamame soy beans, which I like. There’s also broccoli, carrots, onions in it. Baby corn would be a good addition. Before adding the veggies and whatever diced meat or seafood, Into the rice would go 2 tbsp. oil, a couple of tbsp. soy sauce, an egg or two, and often a dash of Mae Ploy sweet plum pepper sauce. I have been known to add other odd things (veggies, cashews or peanuts or some peanut butter), just to try it or because, hey, there were leftovers to use. I try to stay within shouting distance of Asian ingredients. I’m still learning / trying Asian cooking. Mmm! Good stuff.
My local grocery store has (inexplicably) decided to remodel, which means utter chaos until (eek) September. — I am considering getting a hiker’s / caver’s lighted hat. They’ve gone to the currently-fashionable low lighting. This is not OK when one needs to read labels or has low vision. It’s also not OK when the tile for the store has been removed down to the concrete, making everything a bare, warehouse grey. I am likely to find the next-nearest grocery store for a while. — Where ~did~ they move that ingredient? Or that one?
Don’t you absolutely HATE it when they remodel the grocery with “improvements” which usually means one can’t find what one wants anymore. And when they change suppliers and no longer carry a certain product it’s even worse. The department head (whom I happened to catch one day) agreed it wasn’t right because he had fielded numerous complaints. I wrote an email to the corporate office and got a nice “I’m sorry” but still, it’s annoying. I have to go to Wal-Mart to get it now.
My local supermarket is a regional chain based in Tahlequah, CJ. I loathe Wal-Mart but have to go there for a couple of items. My other alternate is Target but it’s further away. The local Sprouts and Whole Foods don’t carry these either.
And no, we don’t have Costco or Trader Joes. Costco is coming into the area next year. They’ve solved the liquor licensing problem by having the liquor section as a separate attached entity under different management. And if the state ever loosens the laws (unlikely) they are all set to knock down the adjoining wall.
And they use it as an excuse to raise prices!
To be fair, they haven’t raised the prices. It was always a very small item tucked away in the frozen juice section; just one or two on the shelf. The demand wasn’t there so it went. We’re due another shakeout in the grocery stores hereabouts. Reasors (Tahlequah chain) bought out Food Pyramid and with Whole Foods and Sprouts along with Wal-Mart neighbourhood stores sprouting everywhere something’s got to give.
Mine remodeled and took out the vinyl flooring, but they put s seal-coat of some kind on the concrete – it’s shiny and slightly tinted. They didn’t change the lighting, although they did rearrange the store. I wish they didn’t keep shrinking the aisles for the baking/cereal/canned goods/coffee-and-tea: those are now half-length, while the others are all full-length still.
Amazing.
I can recall being a teen, working in the OKC GEX, when the company told us to show up and work on Sundays and the sheriff threatened to haul us all to jail for violating the ‘blue laws’, ie, no working on Sundays.
I love the consummate compassion of the righteous. Impressed me no end. Lifelong.
The sheriff prowled the aisles, but the company surrounded all sections with tape and told customers they could look but not buy.
Nice day.
would have been interesting for the sheriff if he had hauled everyone to jail….he’d have had to find room, make sure everyone was fed, and then explain to the DA why he arrested everyone for trying to keep their jobs…..yep, the compassion of the righteous….
I remember when Texas still had blue laws; I signed a piece of paper once declaring my purchase of the Beatles record “Can’t Buy Me Love” was an emergency, which was the way a local store attempted to get around the Sunday selling prohibition. I’m not sure it worked out for them; that was in the ’60s and when I worked in retail in the ’70s we still had rules that you could be open Saturday or Sunday, but not both. I guess the state wanted to be fair to the Seventh Day Adventists (my small Texas town had no orthodox Jews). 🙂
Muslims on Friday, Buddhists on Tuesday, if I remember a passage from RAH rightly.
Of course it was an emergency. The Beatles clearly asked for “Help! I need somebody. Help! Not just anybody. He-e-elp!” and “I get by with a little help from my friends.” 😉
If we ruled that everybody had to get one day a week off and called that a law, I’d be for it. I spent that entire summer going to work before the sun rose and getting off after it set, so my impression of outdoors during that whole time was a dark parking lot. And we had price-switching little old ladies and we had the famous fan-sale, in which I was the only kid strong enough to scale the ladder AND get the box fans down safely…and of course the sheriff. Lovely job. By the time it was done, after the summer in hell, I had 300 whole dollars to my name.
Our family meat loaf skips the egg, so it’s deliciously tender, and uses dry oatmeal rather than crumbs. Very simple to remember: 1 # meat, 1 onion, 1 can tomatoes, 1 cup oatmeal. Used to include 1 tsp salt but that got left out when high blood pressure became a problem. Turns out no one missed it. Mmmm … now I’m hungry!