Inspiration from sales

As I mentioned in a previous post, Whole Food runs their weekly specials from Wednesday to Tuesday and in their most recent ad, I noticed they had 85% lean ground beef on special for $3.99/lb. (prime $3.59/lb.). Great, what type of meatloaf can I create this time? After browsing epicurious.com, I found a delicious looking recipe from Ian Kranuer, formerly of Gourmet Magazine and who currently runs The Farm Cooking School in Pennsylvania. I became familiar with Ian when his cooking show briefly ran on public broadcasting.

The recipe on epicurious.com takes approximately 30 minutes to prepare and bakes for almost 1-1/4 hours. The meat mixture for the meatloaf is a combination of ground beef and a bit of ground pork. The preparation involves sautéing chopped onions, garlic, celery and carrots in some butter. Once that is done, some interesting flavors are added such as Worcestershire sauce, cider vinegar and allspice. There are also eggs for binding, parsley and 1/2 cup of pitted prunes chopped and chopped bacon. Such a combination of ingredients each adding a different nuance to the meatloaf it begged to be tried. It also helped that it had great reviews from other cooks. Most of the ingredients I had on hand, but I did need to purchase the ground pork, which I also got at Whole Foods today for $5.99/lb.

​To go along with the meatloaf, I purchased at Delicious Orchards some purple Brussels sprouts. My son recently shopped there and mentioned he saw them. Fortunately when I placed my Personal Shopping order, they were still available. For dinner, I merely cleaned them up, tossed with some olive oil and seasoned them with salt and pepper. I roasted them in the oven along with the meatloaf.

The meatloaf was delicious. Tender, moist and full of flavor. The prunes added just a hint of sweetness along with the sautéed onions and carrots. My repertoire of meatloaf recipes is catching up to my chicken recipes.