Mom's Metloaf

I adore meatloaf. I think it's tasty, awesome and has great leftover potential - and leftovers are even easier than cooking! Man, there's nothing like a nice warm meatloaf sandwich when you're too lazy to cook. Mmmm. It's totally not vegetarian friendly, but that's why Astrani has her meatless recipe blog. This recipe comes from my mom's kitchen with some minor modifications by yours truly. Thanks for teaching me to make meatloaf, ma!

Meatloaf is good alongside a nice starchy side, like pasta, rice or potatoes. Hobo Potatoes and Mashed Potatoes go great with them. If you're watching your carb intake, greens are also awesome with meatloaf.

Mom's Meatloaf

Serves: 4-5 people, leftovers highly probable
Active Cook time: ~15-20 minutes
Inactive Cook time: ~1 1/2 hours
Difficulty: Super Easy

Hardware
-Loaf Pan (9"x5"x3" pan - I got mine in the kitchen gadget aisle of the grocery store)
-Large Mixing Bowl
-Knife/Cutting Board
-Powder-free latex gloves, a clean plastic bag, or a long-handled fork
-Oven
-Rubber Spatula
-Meat Thermometer, Instant-Read Thermometer, or Cook'd Right Sensors (see end of recipe)

Foodstuffs
-1 lb lean ground beef
-1/2 lb Italian sausage
-1/2 cup bread crumbs (Italian seasoned bread crumbs are best, but any will do)
-1 slice white, potato, or sourdough bread
-1 egg
-1 can petite diced tomatoes, mostly drained of juices
-1/2 large yellow or brown onion
-2 to 3 garlic cloves
-2 tsp Italian Seasoning
-2 tsp mustard
-salt/pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 350 Fahrenheit. Dice the onion into small pieces and mince the garlic as fine as possible. Cut open the Italian sausage's casing and empty the meat into mixing bowl with beef, bread crumbs, tomatoes, onions, garlic, egg, seasoning, mustard and salt/pepper. Crumble the piece of bread into the bowl. Mix using a fork, or gloved/covered hand. If you are especially brave, you can use your clean bare hands to mix everything together. Just make sure you don't get any under your nails, ick. Anyways, mix everything together until it's well combined, then use the rubber spatula to move the mix into your loaf pan.

Let cook for about an hour and a half to two hours, checking for done-ness at around an hour and 15 minutes. Use your thermometer to check the internal temperature of your meat in the middle. 160 Farenheit means it's done. Personally, I use Cook'd Right Hamburger Sensors to check if my meatloaf is done. It's a plastic stick you poke in the middle of the meatloaf with a tip that changes to bright red when the correct temperature is reached. I found a place to buy them online, but I just got mine in the grocery store.

The first time you check to see if it's done, you'll probably notice a lot of liquid in the pan. Feel free to drain this off if you don't want your meatloaf's structural integrity compromised. Leaving the liquid in will result in a moister but far less sturdy loaf.

Variations
If you want to cut back on the amount of red meat in your diet, you can use 1/2 lb ground beef and 1/2 lb ground turkey instead of a whole pound of beef. This will result in a drier loaf, so you may not want to drain the fat if you like it nice and moist. You can also substitute the Italian sausage with ground pork if you'd like, but you'll want to add more seasoning, salt and pepper to counter the loss of the sausage.