Supper, Monday November 5, 2018: Meatloaf (ground beef, egg, spinach, rolled oats, pumpkin seed kernels, onion, minced garlic, salt, pepper); baked sweet potato; mixed pickle.
Way back in the day Alexis would cook. This was before we had established our roles as a couple. For me cooking is enjoyable. Usually I lose myself in the moment. This is a really helpful thing now that I have a chronic pain condition. For Alexis not so much. She can cook. In fact the dishes she has made were alway good, but for her the act is anxiety provoking. She will cook if she has to. I cook because I want to.
One of the things that she made back in the day was meatloaf. She liked to make comfort foods. She stepped it up a notch by using an interesting recipe she found. It was spinach and pine nut meatloaf. I really liked it. The whole pine nuts added a crunchy texture and the spinach lightened an otherwise heavy dish.
Since then I have made a number of variations on the original recipe. In this case I used pumpkin seed kernels instead of the pine nuts. This was borne out of necessity, we had no pine nuts. Here I used a little spinach but in the past I have used the leafy parts of chard or boc choy finely chopped. One other difference my version has it that I use rolled oats as the liquid soaker-upper. Again, this is a texture thing. I like the little toothiness that the oats bring.
Comfort foods like this have made a comeback recently. The difference being that the recipes are like the one here. New takes on old standards. I like to think it is in great part due to the maturing of the american palate, at least in some regions. Take your favorite meatloaf recipe, sub oats for the breadcrumbs, add a small bag of frozen chopped spinach, and pine nuts or pumpkin seeds or almond slivers? Idunno, play with it. (Frozen peas? Diced parsnip?)
Oh yeah, thaw the spinach then squeeze the everlivin snot out of it. You need to get the excess moisture out.
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