Category: Meat

This is my basic meatloaf recipe.  You can alter it to add whatever you love best, but I like simple and easy, and this is it!  Here’s how I make mine.

I always start by taking the ground beef out of the fridge, so that it can sit out for at least 30 minutes before I need to add it to the rest of my mixture.  It makes it so much easier to handle.

Then I start with the rest of my ingredients:

One egg, 1/2 an onion diced with 1/2 cup of ketchup and salt and pepper to taste…..

I grate a carrot in to my mixture.  Hayden wouldn’t touch a carrot with a ten foot pole, but as long as its grated he doesn’t mind it.  It also gives the meatloaf more moisture.  I also like to chop mushrooms and add them at this point but Denton doesn’t like them in his meatloaf.  He loves mushrooms, just not in meatloaf.  Sigh.

Beat everything together until its well combined.  The reason I do this step first, is so I don’t have to overwork the ground beef.

I always add some type of breading in at this stage.  I use whatever floats my boat that day:  oatmeal, the leftover ends of the bread loaf, panko, dinner rolls that never made it into the oven, you name it.  Just some type of breading that will give it more heft and body.  I also add 1/4 cup of milk which I don’t have a photo of.

Mix together…..

Now it’s time to add your beef.  Mix together until just combined…..

And add to your meatloaf pan, or rimmed baking sheet, or muffin tins.  I’ve used them all.

Slather the top with ketchup…..and bake until cooked through.  I generally bake mine for at least 40 minutes.

This is so simple, but it’s also very, very delicious!  Enjoy!!

Here you’ll find other awesome sites where I’ve been graciously invited to share my recipes:  Weekend Potluck, Southern Bite, Anna Nuttall, Crafts a la Mode, The Answer is Chocolate, The Country Cook, The Cottage Market, Simply Sweet Home, Tatortots and Jello, Chic on a Shoestring, Easy Peasy Pleasy, Our Mini Family, Strawberry Butterscotch, Pam’s Party and Practical Tips, Finding Silver Pennies, The Lazy Gastronome, My Soulful Home, Life and Linda, Denise Designed,  The Boondocks Blog, I Should Be Mopping the Floor, Keeping It Simple, The Organized Dream,  Flour Me With Love, Create With Joy, Mostly Blogging, A Pinch of Joy, Dwellings, Sew Can Do, Lou Lou Girls, Make Ahead Meals For Busy Moms, Mrs AOK a Work in Progress, Skip to My Lou, Meet Our Life, Worthing Court, Recipes and Ramblings, Yesterday on Tuesday,  My Uncommon Slice of Suburbia, The Sway, Our World Tuesday, Our Home Away From Home, Lori’s Culinary Creations and Celebrate and Decorate

Here’s the handy dandy printable.

Ribs are one of Denton’s favorite things in the world to eat.  But, he will almost never fire up our smoker that lives on the deck, because he doesn’t want to tend to it like it’s a newborn baby kitten without a mama.  So I needed to come up with a way to make ribs that didn’t keep me tied to the kitchen all day.  Enter my crock pot.  This is so, so easy!  Here’s how I do it.

Buy whatever ribs strike your fancy.  These were on sale for $7.22 for the whole rack – yay for the clearance section of the supermarket!

If your ribs aren’t already seasoned like these were, see my notes in the printable recipe.

Slap the lid on your pot, set it to low and cook for 6 to 8 hours.  It’s actually better if you have a couple of racks of ribs in the crock pot.  They will help to hold one another up.  But, one rack is just as delicious on their own!

When they come out of the crock-pot, we like to slather on our favorite BBQ sauce – Sweet Baby Rays – and stick them under the broiler for a couple of minutes.  It gives them a great grilled taste without the effort! 

Eat them with your favorite sides, or eat them by themselves.  They are amazing!

Here you’ll find other awesome sites where I’ve been graciously invited to share my recipes:  Weekend Potluck, Southern Bite, Anna Nuttall, Crafts a la Mode, The Answer is Chocolate, The Country Cook, The Cottage Market, Simply Sweet Home, Tatortots and Jello, Chic on a Shoestring, Easy Peasy Pleasy, Our Mini Family, Strawberry Butterscotch, Pam’s Party and Practical Tips, Finding Silver Pennies, The Lazy Gastronome, My Soulful Home, Life and Linda, Denise Designed,  The Boondocks Blog, I Should Be Mopping the Floor, Keeping It Simple, The Organized Dream,  Flour Me With Love, Create With Joy, Mostly Blogging, A Pinch of Joy, Dwellings, Sew Can Do, Lou Lou Girls, Make Ahead Meals For Busy Moms, Mrs AOK a Work in Progress, Skip to My Lou, Meet Our Life, Worthing Court, Recipes and Ramblings, Yesterday on Tuesday,  My Uncommon Slice of Suburbia, The Sway, Our World Tuesday, Our Home Away From Home, Lori’s Culinary Creations and Celebrate and Decorate

Here’s the handy dandy printable.

This is another one of my “non recipe” recipes.  It is so easy and simple, but it gives you such great food for little effort.  There are only two ingredients and they are delicious.  Here they are:

Chicken and Italian dressing.

That’s it.  I always slice my chicken breasts in half horizontally to make two chicken breasts, since they are always so thick.  If you want to leave yours whole, you are ready to throw them into a resealable Ziploc bag, pour over the dressing to cover the chicken and stick it in the fridge for at least a couple of hours to overnight.  You can also freeze the chicken and dressing right in the bag for up to six months.  Grill the chicken after removing it from the bag until done and you have an amazing protein that everyone will love.  It doesn’t get any easier than that.

You can use whatever Italian dressing you have on hand.

This set is ready to go into the freezer. 

Hopefully, one day soon, I will remember to take a beautiful photo of a completed dish.  Until then, you’ll just have to use your imagination and my pitifully lighted photo above to grasp how yummy this dish really is.  Here’s the handy dandy printable, just in case you can’t remember what the ingredients were!

You guys.  This recipe.  It is so, so good!  I want to create this dish at least once a week, because not only is it divine the first day you prepare it, it makes the most amazing leftovers to use in quesadillas, grilled paninis or just to snack on that you will ever eat!  You can also shred the meat and mix it with the leftover sauce for pulled pork sandwiches, yay!

The marinade is spectacular.  And the Coca~cola sauce…..it is marvelous.  Seriously.  I believe that you could put this stuff on a shoe and it would make it taste great.  You have to try it.

Here’s what you need.

A pork loin of whatever size you choose.  You can choose a two pound pork loin or an eight pound pork loin, it won’t matter.  It just needs to fit in your marinade container and you’ll have more leftovers, yum!

Put all of your marinade ingredients into a gallon size ziploc bag and mix.  To do this, I seal it up and squish it around.  Easy peasy, and done.

Place your pork into the baggie and stick into the fridge overnight.  You will be so glad you did this, I promise.

The next morning, put your pork loin into the slow cooker and discard your marinade.  I know it’s painful to just dump something down the drain, but it has done it’s job.  All of the liquid you see in the photo above is from cooking all day on low.  You are definitely going to want to eat lunch, because otherwise you are going to starve to death on the day you make this from the incredible smells that will be wafting through your kitchen.

About an hour before you are ready to sit down and eat, make your Coca~Cola sauce.  Mix all of the sauce ingredients in a pot over medium and simmer for 10 to 15 minutes until thickened.  Pour 1/3 of the sauce over the pork and cook for an additional 20 to 30 minutes.

Keep the remainder of the sauce to spoon over everything in sight.  It’s so, so good!

Here’s the handy dandy printable!