My Family Favorite Meatloaf with Sweet and Sour Glaze Recipe

During the winter my family loves classic home-style comfort food for dinner.  One of my family's favorite dinners is classic meatloaf, it always hits the spot!  So I thought I would share my recipe.

Classic Meatloaf with Sweet and Sour Glaze

Preheat oven to 375 F.
Ingredients-
1 1/2 lbs ground beef
1-2 Tablespoon dried minced onion
1/2 teaspoon ground oregano
1/2 -1 teaspoon Italian herb blend
salt and pepper (not much, I add in a few twists of each using my sea salt and pepper grinders)
1 sleeve Ritz crackers ( I used to always use saltines, but one day I substituted Ritz and have used them ever since, they are smoother and easier to incorporate, and I think the buttery flavor adds something yummy to the meatloaf)
1 cup rolled oats
2 eggs
Ketchup

Glaze-
Ketchup
Yellow Mustard
1/2 cup brown sugar

In a large bowl combine hamburger, spices, eggs, oats, and an entire sleeve of Ritz crackers crushed (they are easy to crunch with your hands as you add them in), and about 1/2 a cup of ketchup to begin.  Using a fork mix the ingredients together until everything is well incorporated, add more ketchup as needed to create a mixture that will hold together well, and is moist but not overly moist.  Add more herbs and minced onion if needed, since you can't taste raw beef I give it a good smell to see if it smells seasoned to my liking.  Mix until incorporated.

Then spray the bottom of a roasting pan with cooking oil, and mound the meatloaf mixture in the center of the pan. Using a fork, shape into an oblong loaf, like shown below. I like to use a fork because it leaves grooves in the meatloaf which will hold the glaze better later in the cooking process.

Bake uncovered for about 45 minutes to an hour at 375 F., meatloaf should be browned but not crispy or dark, check it occasionally so it doesn't over cook on the outside, then it will be time to add the glaze.

To make the sweet and sour glaze, combine 1/2 cup of ketchup, 1/2 a cup of brown sugar, and a couple tablespoons of yellow mustard into a bowl, and stir until mixed and sugar is incorporated.  Then give it a taste, it may need more mustard, or ketchup, or even a bit more sugar, I like it to be sweet with a definite sour element from the mustard and ketchup, but I don't want to taste any one ingredient too much.  Add what it needs and mix thoroughly.  Then top the mostly cooked meatloaf with this glaze, I like to cover the whole surface and sides, if the meatloaf is large, I may make a bit more glaze because I really like the whole loaf to be coated.

Put the meatloaf back in the oven to finish cooking.  After glazing it should be about 15 to 20 minutes more to finish cooking.  Use a meat thermometer, and follow guidelines for hamburger temperatures to check doneness, occasionally for a larger loaf I have to turn up the oven if it is not reaching temperature, but be careful once the glaze is on, since it is sugary it will burn if the oven is too hot.  The topping will be bubbly but not too dark.

We enjoy our meatloaf with the classic mashed potatoes and green beans.  Now that the kids are older we don't have left overs, but if you do have left over meatloaf, it makes an excellent sandwich the next day!

This classic meal is always welcome at dinner time and the whole family loves it.

Thanks for reading! ~April

Monday Ramblings - Books, Foxes, Sherlock and Downton

It has been quite some time since I have written a post, I have been having a lazy January!  I always tend to get a late start to the new year, with all the holiday busyness I tend to hibernate in early January.

We did have a fun outing right before school started back up, we were all excited to go and see the Sherlock exhibit at OMSI (our science museum).  We all love mystery, and my daughter is especially fond of BBC's show Sherlock.  The exhibit featured an interactive mystery to solve, it was a blast.  Sadly, no photos were allowed in the exhibit, but there were a couple of photo ops outside of the main exhibit. This buggy was in one of the Sherlock Movies.

This was another old buggy from Sherlock's time.

The whole Sherlock exhibit was great, and at the end were props from both old and recent Sherlock movies as well as props from BBC's Sherlock which Sarah and I were really excited to see in person.  Our museum trip was a fun way to finish winter break.

With the kids back in school I felt like the house needed a little brightening up, it always seems a little bare after all the holiday decorations are put away.  When I saw these cute little bright yellow hedgehog candle holders I new they would be just the ticket for brightening up the living room.

I love hedgehogs and I thought these little guys were very cute!

Speaking of cute, I am on a fox kick, they seem to be everywhere right now, and since I love all things woodland, I can hardly help myself.  I had seen this fox tray and fox canister during the holidays but they were not in my holiday budget.  Yesterday I was in Target for a few items, and came across them on clearance for much less than they were during Christmas, so I couldn't pass them up, I was so excited to add them to my kitchen!

Here is the fox handle on the tray, I am looking forward to the next time I can serve goodies on my new tray!

The little canister is just the right size to hold sugar next to the coffee pot! :)

 

Most of this month I have been enjoying nice quiet days and catching up on some of my favorite programs. While I was shopping during the holidays I tucked away a few of my favorite treats.  I love these little Tunnock's Tea Cakes from Scotland, I first discovered them at World Market a few years back, and love to keep a box in the pantry.

These little tea cakes are very sweet little goodies, it is a chocolate covered marshmallow type filling on top of a cookie biscuit treat, and they are perfect with coffee or tea.

I really enjoyed the series premier of Downton last week, and look forward to watching last night's episode, which is waiting for me on the DVR. My sister gave me a Downton Mug for Christmas, perfect for a cup of tea while I'm watching Downton Abbey!  Thanks Mia! :)

Speaking of Christmas Gifts, I also got some fun new books this Christmas.  Both my daughter and I watch Cake Boss together, since Sarah loves the show so much I thought I would get her the new Cake Boss Family Celebrations Cookbook, and she knows how much I have wanted to try some of Buddy's frosting and filling recipes so she bought me a Cake Boss Cookbook with Buddy's stories and recipes.  We both had a laugh on Christmas morning when we both unwrapped our cookbooks! We are looking forward to trying out some new recipes.

My sister Mia got me this whimsical book on Raising Unicorns which I am looking forward to reading.

My sister Amy got me an interesting book all about Apple Cider Vinegar and all the things you can use it for as well as recipes, along with a bottle of unfiltered Apple Cider Vinegar.  I look forward to trying out some of the recipes, I love Apple Cider Vinegar in salad dressings, so I am looking forward to seeing what else I can make with it.  :)

So that is what I have been up to.  I am looking forward to another year of blogging, I have been making a list of all the posts and recipes I would like to do here in the next few months.  I am also currently planning a fun event that I look forward to sharing about with you soon.

Hope everyone is having a nice January. Thanks for reading!

New Years Eve Paper Lantern Garland and Glittered Clocks

Happy New Year's Eve!  I spent the day yesterday with the family putting away Christmas decor, and getting ready to ring in the new year.  I was inspired to be a little crafty and had some fun and simple decorations in mind.  I thought I would share how to make these easy New Year's decorations.

I wanted to make my New Year decorations mostly out of simple white copy paper, the first craft I made were simple glittered clocks.  There are many clock faces available to print online, I found some at a teaching website ( printable clocks link ).  I printed them out in black and white and cut out the few I wanted, especially the clock striking midnight, and I printed them out in various sizes.  I glued the clock faces down to card stock, and cut them out, and using gel glitter glue added tinsel silver glitter to the edges.  Regular silver glitter would work too, I am just partial to the Martha Stewart Tinsel glitter for it's old fashioned look.  I also glittered a Happy New Year 2014 sign to add to the table.  Here are how the clocks turned out.

I tucked the little glittered clocks throughout my dining room decor.  I kept out some of the glittery floral picks from Christmas, and some of the silver glittered Christmas balls to use as New Year's Eve decor.  I love the way they turned out!  If I had more time I would love to make some glittered clocks with a aged newsprint background, and maybe some different paper fringes, but I will have to save that for next year!

The next craft I made were little paper lanterns.  I have been making paper lanterns since I was a child in school, I have made them many times over the years with different colored papers for all the different holidays.  This past week I was watching a British Mystery on PBS and they kept showing little paper lanterns that some children were crafting, and so I was inspired to make some for New Year's Eve.  I knew right away I wanted to make them to match my clocks with plain white copy paper, and of course some more silver glitter!  They are super easy to make, here is a quick tutorial.

Supplies- Regular white copy paper, glue stick, scissors, single hole puncher, glue and glitter.

Fold a piece of paper in half, like shown above, and cut it into two equal sized pieces. Take one of the pieces and fold it in half again this time fold on the long side, see above.  Cut lines about 1/2 an inch apart, all along the folded edge, but not all the way through to the top, stop about half an inch from the top, I drew blue lines on the paper above in the tutorial pictures so you can see the type of cuts to make.  Cut all the way along the paper stopping half and inch from the end.

Once you have finished your cuts, unfold the paper, and glue on one end as shown in the picture above with the glue stick and the blue line showing were to apply the glue.  Fold it around and hold together for a moment while the glue adheres.  That is your basic paper lantern.

When you have made as many as you want, punch two holes in the top so you can string them up on some yarn as a garland.  Then using gel glue apply a thin bead to the top and bottom and sprinkle on some silver glitter.  When they are dry, string them on some white yarn and hang them up.  I also made a few to set around the table.

 I love the way all the decorations turned out!  I am just about ready to ring in the New Year!

We have a basket set out with our old fashioned clackers, and I am about to head to the store to make sure I am all stocked up on snacks for the evening.  The kids are having a few friends over and I am looking forward to a fun evening!

Happy New Year!  Have a fun and safe evening!

Christmas 2013 and Two Festive Salads

We are still in the midst of our twelve days of Christmas here, and will be heading out soon to celebrate some more with friends of ours.  This year we have had a very nice Christmas celebration, we have spent a lot of time with family and friends with plenty of good food and treats.  I really enjoyed catching up with my family, it is so nice to see everyone!

We all had fun Christmas morning exchanging gifts, even the dogs got in on the action and had fun opening their Christmas squeaky ducks and dog treats in their stocking.  We all agree that the dog gifts are just as much a gift for the whole family, because the dogs are so fun to watch with their new treats, very entertaining!

This year I had a lot of fun with a gift that I made for my mom, sisters, and grandma. I have spent quite a bit of time organizing old family photos, and getting them scanned onto the computer, so I decided to make a photo book of our mom and her family and me and my sisters through the years.  I made the book at Walmart.com and I was very happy with how it turned out, everyone really enjoyed looking through all the old photos. I also included two sections of Christmas Past pictures, one set from the 50's and 60's and another set of the 70's and 80's, it was so fun to see the old styles of Christmas decor and types of gifts.

I titled the book A Walk Down Memory Lane, and for the cover photo, since I couldn't choose one picture, I decided to take a picture of a random pile of some of our vintage family photos, I really liked how it turned out! This was a very fun Christmas project!

On Christmas Eve we celebrated with Gary's family, his mother brought over Chicago Beef sandwiches which she had ordered all the way from Chicago from Portillos.com, Gary and his family are from Chicago, and being in Oregon we don't get to enjoy these classic Chicago treats too often, they were delicious!

On Christmas day I had my family over, and we had a Christmas lunch buffet, I made croissant sandwiches, with chips and dips, and a couple of salads and BBQ Little Smokey's. We had lots of Christmas cookies on hand to nibble on, as well as plenty of Candy Canes and Old Fashioned Ribbon candy (shown in the picture at the top of the page).  I thought I would share my two salad recipes from the day.  I made a classic Lime Christmas Ambrosia and my favorite salad, Broccoli, Bacon and Raisin salad.

Ingredients-
1 cup hot water
a few ice cubes
1- 6 oz package of lime Jell-O
2- 8 oz. tubs of cool whip
3- 15 1/4 oz cans of fruit cocktail
1 bag mini marshmallows
maraschino cherries for garnishing

In a large bowl combine Jello with 1 cup hot water stir until mostly dissolved, if the jello is still hot, add a few ice cubes and swirl around in jello until jello has cooled, remove any left over ice cubes. Add in both tubs of Cool Whip, and stir into the Jello, when the jello and cool whip are combined drain the cans of fruit and add the drained fruit into the Jello and cool whip, then fold in about 3/4 of the bag of mini marshmallows, fold it all together until combined.  Cover and chill in the fridge until the Ambrosia is set up which takes about 3-4 hours.  When you are ready to serve garnish the top with halves of maraschino cherries.  This recipe makes a pretty huge bowl full, and is meant to serve a large gathering of people and is the perfect size for a potluck, you could easily cut this recipe in half if you only needed it for a family sized meal.  This classic ambrosia is a nice sweet side dish, the kids seem to really enjoy it, I make a version with orange jello and mandarin oranges for Easter.

The next salad is a favorite in our family, Broccoli, Bacon, and Raisin Salad, this is a very easy salad to make and is always delicious for special meals and potlucks.

Ingredients-
A large bunch of fresh broccoli
1 package of bacon cooked and crumbled into small pieces
regular raisins (and golden raisins too if desired)
1 red onion
Mayonnaise
Milk
apple cider vinegar
sugar

I did not include amounts in this recipe because I make it according to how big of a bowl I want to make, and go by the look and taste of it.  When I am making this salad for a large group or for a potluck I buy two full produce bags of broccoli, the type without the large stems.  I start by cleaning the broccoli and cutting off the flowerettes into nice bite sized pieces, I do not use stem pieces at all.  Add the broccoli to a large mixing bowl, along with the cooked and crumbled bacon ( I made a really large salad for a group of 17 people so I added two packages of cooked and crumbled bacon), add between 1 and 2 cups of raisins depending on how much broccoli you have, add between half to a whole finely chopped red onion ( you don't want too much onion, just enough for a little zest, I only add a whole onion if I am making a huge bowl of salad) Toss ingredients together and set aside.  The dressing is also one of those recipes you have to taste to get right, and also make enough for the size of your salad.  Start with 1 cup of mayo and thin it with 1/8th cup of milk, add two teaspoons of apple cider vinegar and two teaspoons of sugar, stir to combine.  The dressing should be thin enough to easily toss with the salad, and not heavily coat it, if it is too thick add a bit more milk.  The dressing should be a touch sweet and have that bite of apple cider vinegar, I usually add a smidge more sugar and vinegar until I get the right balance, if you need a larger batch double the recipe so there will be enough for the size of salad.  When you are happy with the dressing, drizzle it over broccoli salad, and toss to lightly coat.  This salad is best when the flavors have a chance to mingle for a bit, I like to chill mine for at least an hour or two before serving.  The salty bacon and sweet raisins really complement the broccoli and the whole family loves it, it is also a hit at potlucks and disappears right away!

The whole day was a lot of fun.  I really enjoyed all the time with family!  I am looking forward to the New Year and have some fun easy New Years crafts that I am working on for decorations.  I hope everyone had a nice Christmas!

O Christmas Tree

One week until Christmas Eve!  This past weekend was full of Christmas fun, Sarah and Joseph performed in the Singing Christmas Tree, and in between that, throughout the week, we have slowly been decorating our Christmas Tree.

This year's Singing Christmas Tree had the theme "Christmas in Oz" all the singers had to dress up as people in Oz dressed for Christmas.  This is how Sarah and Joe's costumes turned out.

Here is a little glimpse at the Singing Christmas Tree event.  Singing Christmas Tree is a yearly tradition of ours that we enjoy every year.

In addition to the Singing Christmas Tree, this week we have been decorating our Christmas tree.  Normally we decorate the tree in one day, this year it has taken us all week, and we still are not completely done. Now that the kids are older they are much busier, so we have been decorating it in 20 minute increments! 

We are lucky to live in Clackamas County, Oregon, the largest producer in the Country of live Christmas trees, and our county is were the majority in Oregon are grown.  When you drive past the large tree farms all through November and December the air completely smells of Christmas trees.  Earlier in the month we drove by a farm using a helicopter to help with the harvest, so we stopped for a bit to watch and take pictures.  

As you can imagine, trees are available on every corner in town, the last few years we have purchased our tree from the same lot, we always find the one we like right away. Our car always looks very Griswaldy driving back home!

Here's our Christmas Tree!

We have been collecting ornaments as a family for 20 years, and I also have some from when I was a child. We have had many different themes over the years and have quite an eclectic mix of ornaments.  This year our tree is a mix of all of our favorites, from Victorian to Mid-Century Modern, from Scandinavian Rustic to Modern Pop-Culture Hallmark Ornaments, our tree has it all!  It's a bit jumbled, but fun to look at!  

Hope everyone is having a nice week before Christmas!

Thanks for reading!

Our Christmas House 2013

Christmas is just two weeks away, and I have been busy busy getting the house and gifts ready. I thought I would take a break from some of my projects and do a quick post of our Christmas home.

This year I added some new metallic decorations to my cardboard village in the foyer, I love the updated look, I also swapped out the white "snow" blanket I normally use for brown burlap.

I also brought silver into the dining room with a new antiqued silver glitter birdcage, a mercury glass owl, and some icy, silver floral picks, I like the way the silver works with my wooden and paperboard pieces. You can see the fox worked into the winter setting, I kept him out from my fall decor.  I also have my Olive Wood Nativity set on the table, and my Celtic Nativity set on a nearby bookcase.

We display our tree in the dining room as well, I will do a separate post about our tree, but I wanted to bring some color into the wood and silver decor, so the tree wouldn't be completely out of place with its colorful family decorations.  I love the old jolly Santa in the top photo, he was displayed on my Grandma's mantle when I was a small child, and I have had him on display in our home since my children were babies, I also have a new tall Santa to match my felt trees on the bookcase, and a few little pine cone elves.  I also tuck in little decorations around the books on the bookcase.  Just enough color added to match the tree. :)

Down the hallway on the way to the living room I have a little side table where I display my little glittery wooden village, with floral picks and ornaments in the background. On the lover shelf I display some cast iron pine cone candle holder and floral picks around my salt lamp, only heavy objects for the lower shelf as my curious younger lab Zoey likes to rearrange the display with her nose or add her tennis ball to the display, - nothing delicate would stand up to her "decorating".

In the living room I like to decorate with reds and dark greens.  I love to display my old world Santa's with greenery in the background and red twinkle lights above the fireplace.

We also have quite a few nutcrackers on display, even the Rat King! 

Our carolers are on display every year, as well as a few of our favorite Christmas dolls and pillows.

Lastly, this week Gary surprised me with a pretty musical snow globe, it was the perfect addition to my little side table.  What a nice surprise that was, Thanks Gary!

So that wraps up the tour of our Christmassy home.  Tonight the kids perform in the annual Singing Christmas Tree here in town, the next few nights will be busy with a few more shows. Sunday we will spend the day putting decorations on our tree which is all lit up and waiting for decorations.  Then its time to begin filling the house with Christmas cookie goodness.  I am looking forward to all the holiday fun over the weekend!

Thanks for reading. :)