Not your mama's meatloaf

I will admit, I DID NOT like Meatloaf when I was a kid. I am not sure what prompted me to try it in adulthood. I think we were trying to expand our dinner repertoire and cook more meals at home, or it might have been that hubby had found memories of meatloaf. Anyone, this has become our go to recipe for an easy dinner, that is relatively cheap and versatile. You can add or omit vegetables based on what you have on hand and you can essentially use any ground meat.

Vegetable Meatloaf

Adapted from The Turkey Store Best Ever Meatloaf

Serves 5

Ingredients:

2 Tbs butter

1 cup chopped onion

1 chopped carrot

1 chopped green pepper

2 stalks celery chopped

3 cloves of garlic minced

1 lb ground turkey (or beef)

1/2 cub bread crumbs

1 large egg

3/4 cup ketchup

3/4 Tsp salt

2 Tbs Worcestershire sauce

3/4 Tsp pepper

Instructions:

1. Heat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Melt butter in a small skillet over medium-high heat. Add onion, garlic, and rest of vegetables; cook 5 minutes stirring occasionally. Transfer mixture to large bowl; cool 5 minutes.
3. Add turkey, bread crumbs, egg, 1/4 cup ketchup, Worcestershire, salt, and pepper to vegetable mixture; mix well. (tip: i find it mixes well if I add everything to the meat and mix it, and than add the vegetables).
4. pack mixture into an 8x4 in loaf pan. Spread the remaining 1/2 cup ketchup over top. Bake 50-55 minutes or until no longer pink in center and internal temperature of loaf (if using turkey) reaches 165 degrees.
5. Let stand at room temperature 5 minutes before slicing.

We usually enjoy it with mashed potatoes and a veggie. Hubby likes to use the leftovers to make sandwiches.