Half-Muggle Meatloaf

I don't really like cooking.  It would be awesome if I did, but I don't.  I am most motivated to cook, though, when trying a new recipe.  Maybe it's because as it is, I don't know that many recipes and the ones I do know get old fast.

So be proud of me, for today, I made dinner.  I love cooking in crockpots--I know, I know, that sounds contradictive.  So anyhow, I was going to make a recipe from this FREE cookbook I got from Amazon for my Kindle app, but I realized we were out of milk.  (The girls who were with me last night when I asked my husband if I could wait a day to buy milk can laugh at me now.)  So I searched through another free cookbook from Amazon (sorry, it's not free anymore), called "Circle of Friends Cookbook:  Meatloaf Recipes" and found a recipe that jumped out at me because it called for redskin potatoes.  I usually have red potatoes, because I like them a lot and heard once that they have more nutrients than the brown ones.  Don't even know if it's true.  So I threw some hamburger into the microwave to defrost and began to make "Slow-Cooker Magic Meatloaf."  Here is what I actually made:

Half-Muggle Meatloaf

2 lbs. ground beef
1 egg, beaten
1 c. water
yellow mustard
Worcestershire sauce

2 pieces of toast scraped for breadcrumbs
.87 oz. packet of gravy mix

a few broccoli florets
6 to 8 redskin potatoes

1.  Mix all ingredients except potatoes in a large bowl.  

As I began to throw my ingredients together, I first realized that this "magic" recipe also called for milk.  I don't know how I missed it before.  I was already defrosting hamburger and decided that milk probably wasn't as important for this recipe as it was for the last one.  I reinforced this idea by checking the gravy packet and verifying that it calls for water.  So first, milk was replaced with water.

To make magic meatloaf, you also needed to chop a half cup of each green pepper and an onion.  I do not typically have either of these things and figured we would survive without the green pepper.  I did have one ridiculously old onion, though--I think from whenever Matt's dad visited last and fajitas did not get made.  The bell peppers had long been thrown away, but whenever I opened the crisper drawer to peak at the onion, he happily smiled back at me, as normal as an onion should be.  So I thought, "Sweet, onions last forever in the fridge just like apples."  Umm, but I cut it.  And it was laced with a cool color, so it would seem, onions do not, in fact, last forever.

I turned back to the fridge in search of alternate produce and glimpsed a bag containing what I suddenly thought was a green bell pepper, never truly thrown away from the unmade fajitas, and miraculously still alive.  But it was broccoli.  And so, I grabbed a few broccoli florets, chopped them finely, and threw them into the bowl.

As for the gravy, I had some free packets from couponing and opted for the 30% less sodium packet.  I like using the fat-free, less-sodium, sadly-doesn't-taste-as-good ingredients for cooking, because then it's healthier and you don't notice.  

At this point, I really feel like I'm skimping on the meatloaf, so I throw a bit of Worcestershire and mustard in for good measure.  Also, magic meatloaf needs 1 1/2 tsp. of salt, but I figured my condiments covered that.  And because I didn't have any saltine crackers, I toasted 2 slices of bread, scraped them for bread crumbs and crumbled the last few pieces into the mix.

2.  Mix well and form into a loaf;  place in a lightly greased slow cooker.

3.  Arrange potatoes around meatloaf.

4.  Cover and cook on low setting for 8 to 10 hours, or on high setting for 3 to 5 hours.

And I get paranoid about drying things out, so I added about a 1/4 cup of water over the potatoes.

I was surprised by how good it was!  I don't even really like meatloaf.  And maybe that was the key, by using gravy, this was unlike any meatloaf I've had before.  I assumed the potatoes would get some yummy meat flavor, but was pleasantly surprised by the flavors the potatoes added to the meat.

And here is the kid stamp of approval.  On the meat, not the potatoes, though.  They're not really potato eaters.  But... they're not really broccoli eaters, either, and secretly they got a little tonight!