The five pound meat loaf I made yesterday.

of which I had a thick sandwich of for breakfast.

I had a 5 pound unit of ground beef and wondered what to do with it. I knew if I thawed it I'd have to use it rather than refreeze the unused part. 

Seeing how I have not made a meat loaf before in a long, long time I decided to give it a whirl. After the prep work was done I realized I had enough meat loaf to fill an entire loaf pan and make a loaf the size of an oversized loaf of Italian bread which I put on a sheet and I threw them both into the oven.

After it was done I let it sit and a friend and I put a pretty good sized dent in the big loaf, the remains of which were hacked up into thirds and stuffed into the freezer. The loaf pan went into the fridge for sandwiches.

I actually had planned ahead to a semi-reasonable extent.

When I mentioned this someone asked me if I wasn't going to get tired of meat loaf. I replied "Nah. Back in 1958 my dad clubbed a brontosaurus and I just finished up the last of it a couple days ago."

"Really?"

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The recipe that got out of hand several months ago was American Chop Suey, aka goulash in some parts of the country. It was a school lunch staple and one of my favorites. I had not had it since other than a can of beefaroni once at work when we were in a hurry. IIRC I at it cold that time.

Anyway, after all these years I had a hankering for it. In my senir year I asked one of the school cooks the recipe and she gave it to me. Needlesss to say, I didn't have it anymore but decided to have a go at it by memory.

When I had dumped three pounds of elbow macaroni into the pot I realized that the woman that gave me the recipe had a husband and nine kids to feed and said she's freeze a lot of leftovers.

Whoops!

Then there were a couple of mistakes where I put too much of this into it and had to add more of that to compensate. When I was done,lo and behold I had almost three full gallons of it. I promptly gave some to the neighbors and got on the phone and had an impromptu emergancy dinner party.

American Chop Suey is far from a gourmet food. It falls into the category of being a slop dish or drunk food, really. It falls into the category of tuna noodle caserole and things of that sort.

Still I was surprised my guests raved about it and said I nailed it. They had grown up on it and hadn't had it for decades. 

Still, there was a huge pile of leftovers that lasted me a while. 

To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY