the best meatloaf ever and other stories

I keep my recipes in a yellow folder. this is not very organized of me, but so far it works. there are recipes from everywhere in that yellow folder. England. Canada. my childhood. they are on all kinds of different sized paper and all kinds of different handwriting. paper torn from magazines, weird-shaped computer paper printed in scruffy, faded ink, and notebook paper, smudged and splotched with grease and cookie-dough.

yesterday I sifted through them all in search of my recipe for The Best Meatloaf Ever. that is not actually what Elizabeth Cranmer (look, she has a blog.) called it when she wrote the recipe out on a little square of scratch paper for me, but that is what I call it, because that is what it is. The Best Meatloaf Ever. I promise.

for anyone who doesn't believe me, you can try it yourself.

1 ½ pounds of ground beef
1 cup cracker crumbs
1 can tomato soup
1 beaten egg
1 cup water
2 tablespoons vinegar
2 tablespoons powdered mustard
3 tablespoons brown sugar

for the meatloaf:
stir together the ground beef, cracker crumbs, ½ cup of the tomato soup, and the egg. press into your favorite meatloaf pan.

for the sauce--
mix the rest of the soup with the water, vinegar, mustard, and brown sugar. spread or pour the sauce over the meatloaf and bake at 375° F for 1 ½ hours.

really, it's beautiful. just eat it with a bit of rice and some salad, so you don't feel like a complete carnivore.

I contributed this recipe (and the awesome chicken salad one) to a collaborative sort of cookbook some folks around here were putting together. they emailed this 'cookbook' out to us a few weeks ago and it made the editor in me cringe.

not to mention the designer in me, who wants everything to look flawlessly attractive, organized, and consistent.

therefore, I'm going to take their little rich text file and revise it to my heart's content. but it might take me a while. I've got some websites to design and some interviews to transcribe, things to sew and stories to write.