The Inaugural Dinner

Tonight's menu: mini meatloaf, oven roasted green beans, and homemade wheat bread served with butter and honey.

I like a good meatloaf, but it can take forever to make. Mini meatloaf, though... that only takes a little while. About 30 minutes from start to finish if your ground beef is already thawed. They come out just as yummy as the original thing, but the cook time is cut by over half.

Start off with  1 lb of extra lean ground beef. I like to use 94/6 for this one. The less lean your beef is, the more your meatloaf will be sitting in grease. Me no likey grease.

Preheat your oven to 450. To your thawed beef, add 1 egg, 1/2 cup of milk, 1/2-3/4 cup bread crumbs (Progresso makes some Italian Bread Crumbs that are my go-to item for stuff like this), onion powder to taste, garlic powder to taste, a dash of salt, pepper, 1/2-1 tsp sage, 1/2-1 tsp dry mustard, a dash of Worchestershire sauce, and stir it all up until it's well-mixed. Get out your ice cream scoop and put it into ungreased muffin cups. Bake it for 25 minutes.

Don't look at my poor muffin cups. They've been used and abused, but they're made of silicone and I adore them. Look at the deliciousness cooking inside them. There you go!

Next up is the bread. I have a bread machine, so yesterday I made a loaf of wheat bread to go with our chicken soup. We served the leftovers tonight as well. If you have a bread machine, for the love of all that is holy, don't use the mixes that I've seen sold. Making bread from scratch is just about the easiest thing in the world with a bread machine. You can't mess it up. Really. I like to use the Hillbilly Housewife's recipes, but if you do a Google search you can find a ton of yummy things.

Served warm with some butter and honey. It's almost like dessert.

Last is the oven roasted green beans. Easy-peasy. Wash some fresh green beans, snap off the ends, drizzle with a little olive oil, and throw on some sea salt, pepper, onion powder, and garlic powder. Mix it up well and spread it out on a cookie sheet. Bake at 450 for 10 minutes for al dente, longer if you want them more cooked. 

Crunchy and delicious. The Carnivore went back for seconds, even if the Giant wouldn't touch them. Baby steps, baby steps...