I have crap for luck with meatloaf. If it's not one thing going wrong, it's another. The first time I made it, my dish split clean in two in the oven. The meatloaf was fine, tasted good too, but I think it was a bad omen for all future meatloaf.
I made meatloaf Saturday for dinner. It was SO GOOD. And huge! James and I were really looking forward to lots of meatloaf leftovers. So after a day of busting my butt around the house, James cleans the kitchen while I park it on the couch. He finishes, goes upstairs to play a computer game and I watch something I DVRed and then trot up to bed about 8pm.
6:15am rolls around and I wake up and trot downstairs only to have the meatloaf staring at me from across the kitchen (well, the container, really, since the lid is on and I can't see the meat). MOTHERF****R! Twelve hours that meatloaf sat on the kitchen counter. Dammit dammit dammit!!! I quickly shoved it in the fridge, completely in denial that anything had already started to grow on it. (No, we aren't going to eat it.)
I don't blame James at all. I'm just as responsible because we always leave meat out for a bit to cool before we put it in the fridge. We had a bad intestinal experience with chicken pot pie once when we stuck it in the fridge while it was still too hot. And it's not the first time we've forgotten about something. I've done that with pork tenderloin too. And some raw cube steak I was thawing.
It pisses me off, though, because the meatloaf was SO GOOD! It wasn't perfect, mind you. My peppers and onions were too big so the slices were a little loose, but the flavor of the meat was heaven! Thanks for the little secret ingredients, Suzanne.
So we're off to Asheville on Tuesday and back on Friday. I'm going to make another (smaller) meatloaf again next Saturday and pray that we remember to refrigerate it.
