Is meatloaf dressy enough for Christmas dinner?
Some years ago I figured out why I had such a repulsion to Thanksgiving and Christmas meals. I hate the 'traditional' foods. Like who set this menu? I assure you that no one on Plymouth Rock voted on greenbean casserole. Or if they did they were probably sent back to England.
So as I hosted these meals in my home I sat down and took a good hard look at what was expected: A complete turkey, giblet gravy, greenbean casserole, crescent rolls, mashed potatoes, stuffing, dressing, a crudite platter, cranberry stuff and pumpkin pie. I estimated that I ate one section of turkey (the breast) and for some unknown reason the turkey did not arrive at the table until cold. I'm not much of a saucer anyway but the idea of making a gravy out of the waste filtering organs of like the nasty bird on Earth turned me off. Greenbean casserole is...scary looking and I don't like those weird fried things on top. Crescent rolls? I like bread. I LOVE bread. But rolls that pop out of a can like those gag tins of snakes weren't doing it for me especially since I usually had to supplement my meal with them and ended up consuming like nine of them and usually they're cooked oddly and end up mushy in the center and burned on the bottom. Mashed potatoes. Again, I like them. I do not like them when they've been creamed into a glue like substance that I could spackle up the nail holes in my bedroom with. No amount of butter, salt, pepper or wine will fix that. Dressing and stuffing. Okay, I get stuffing if you actually stuffed the bird. And I know a lot of people are still debating over the Stuffing Scare of the 1980's when we were all told that stuffing the bird pre-cooking would lead to like a food poisoning so bad that our intestines would actually melt. But I don't understand why people just shove a big wad of white bread and powdered sage in the bird. And what is dressing? Isn't that stuffing cooked outside the bird? Do we need more carbs with this meal? And why does it look like road kill? I hate crudite. Seriously. I think shoving a platter of baby pickles, raw carrots and celery and some dip at people is wrong no matter if you did put it on a big platter with a few lettuce leafs tucked about. It cheapens the effort of your meal. Antipasto I'm down with, a nice frommage platter, some nice apps that involve hot crab or puff pastry. The mysterious cranberry gel that comes out of the can and many people leave in one strange round glop that threatens to actually roll off the table if prodded wrong with the can ring marks still on it? No. And pumpkin pie. I am so all about pie it hurts. I love pie. It's hard to screw up pie. Except for pumpkin which a lot of times has an unbaked bottom crust and has a pool of canned pumpkin goo in the middle like a tar pit. Plus many a hostess has actually arrived at the table bearing a tub of Cool-Whip and a spoon to toss some on there for you. Not that this will stop me from scraping off the cooked portion and eating it. So after looking at this I decided enough was enough and that this menu was not allowed in the Novelchick Household. Actually maybe I'm less turned off by the food than the serving styles? If you're going to invite like a hundred people who don't really like each other anyway, at least put some candles on the table or take the time to invest in some decent sized cloth napkins (I'm a napkin snob and I prefer something more like a tablecloth sized swatch for myself). Or put the brussel sprouts in a bowl instead of just letting people try and get them out of the pot with a big slotted spoon.
So the very next year I trotted out a hot spinach dip appetizer with wassail for apps, filet mignon, stuffed potatoes and an amazing sweet potato confection that was basically all the oranges, cinnamon and whipping cream in the world stuck together with a potato. There was fresh rosemary bread. Corn souffle. Crisp salad with homemade dressing. Three desserts, pumpkin, chocolate and ice cream. And people ate until they all looked nine months pregnant. One year my husband made a first course in freakin' wine glasses with a horseradish mousse thing and jumbo shrimp big enough to ride. Our guests are sometimes put off by our radical attempts to serve food that people enjoy. They do not wear relaxed fit pants which we encourage. I thought my mother might have to be taken to the hospital the first time I produced a bottle of Riesling (she's Baptist). We've also served Turducken, salmon and a damn fine turkey breast stuffed with andoullie and dirty rice. I've made corn muffins. I've experimented with dressing so good a recipe that should have served sixteen ended up barely covering six of us. I've baked pies in homemade praline crusts, made mini-bundt cakes and created a chocolate espresso sauce that kept people up for three days straight. There has been brisket. Basically, I have blown the lid off of the traditional holiday menu with increasing success. But this year?
Would meatloaf be wrong? Not just any meatloaf mind you but THIS MEATLOAF Bare Foot Contessa's Meatloaf. I personally used to despise meatloaf having always thought of it as a soggy pile of meat that was robbed of being a decent burger but this meatloaf? It is the stuff of dreams. And maybe some good bread and like garlic mashed potatoes or a sweet potato for my husband? And a huge heffalumping cake for dessert? Would it be selfish of me NOT to want to spend days in the kitchen? To eat a meal and not worry about four hundred pans of Calphalon that must be hand scrubbed?
Will Christ be offended if I serve turkey meatloaf? And maybe make some homeade cranberry sauce out of actual cranberries? I'll pray about it.
Some years ago I figured out why I had such a repulsion to Thanksgiving and Christmas meals. I hate the 'traditional' foods. Like who set this menu? I assure you that no one on Plymouth Rock voted on greenbean casserole. Or if they did they were probably sent back to England.
So as I hosted these meals in my home I sat down and took a good hard look at what was expected: A complete turkey, giblet gravy, greenbean casserole, crescent rolls, mashed potatoes, stuffing, dressing, a crudite platter, cranberry stuff and pumpkin pie. I estimated that I ate one section of turkey (the breast) and for some unknown reason the turkey did not arrive at the table until cold. I'm not much of a saucer anyway but the idea of making a gravy out of the waste filtering organs of like the nasty bird on Earth turned me off. Greenbean casserole is...scary looking and I don't like those weird fried things on top. Crescent rolls? I like bread. I LOVE bread. But rolls that pop out of a can like those gag tins of snakes weren't doing it for me especially since I usually had to supplement my meal with them and ended up consuming like nine of them and usually they're cooked oddly and end up mushy in the center and burned on the bottom. Mashed potatoes. Again, I like them. I do not like them when they've been creamed into a glue like substance that I could spackle up the nail holes in my bedroom with. No amount of butter, salt, pepper or wine will fix that. Dressing and stuffing. Okay, I get stuffing if you actually stuffed the bird. And I know a lot of people are still debating over the Stuffing Scare of the 1980's when we were all told that stuffing the bird pre-cooking would lead to like a food poisoning so bad that our intestines would actually melt. But I don't understand why people just shove a big wad of white bread and powdered sage in the bird. And what is dressing? Isn't that stuffing cooked outside the bird? Do we need more carbs with this meal? And why does it look like road kill? I hate crudite. Seriously. I think shoving a platter of baby pickles, raw carrots and celery and some dip at people is wrong no matter if you did put it on a big platter with a few lettuce leafs tucked about. It cheapens the effort of your meal. Antipasto I'm down with, a nice frommage platter, some nice apps that involve hot crab or puff pastry. The mysterious cranberry gel that comes out of the can and many people leave in one strange round glop that threatens to actually roll off the table if prodded wrong with the can ring marks still on it? No. And pumpkin pie. I am so all about pie it hurts. I love pie. It's hard to screw up pie. Except for pumpkin which a lot of times has an unbaked bottom crust and has a pool of canned pumpkin goo in the middle like a tar pit. Plus many a hostess has actually arrived at the table bearing a tub of Cool-Whip and a spoon to toss some on there for you. Not that this will stop me from scraping off the cooked portion and eating it. So after looking at this I decided enough was enough and that this menu was not allowed in the Novelchick Household. Actually maybe I'm less turned off by the food than the serving styles? If you're going to invite like a hundred people who don't really like each other anyway, at least put some candles on the table or take the time to invest in some decent sized cloth napkins (I'm a napkin snob and I prefer something more like a tablecloth sized swatch for myself). Or put the brussel sprouts in a bowl instead of just letting people try and get them out of the pot with a big slotted spoon.
So the very next year I trotted out a hot spinach dip appetizer with wassail for apps, filet mignon, stuffed potatoes and an amazing sweet potato confection that was basically all the oranges, cinnamon and whipping cream in the world stuck together with a potato. There was fresh rosemary bread. Corn souffle. Crisp salad with homemade dressing. Three desserts, pumpkin, chocolate and ice cream. And people ate until they all looked nine months pregnant. One year my husband made a first course in freakin' wine glasses with a horseradish mousse thing and jumbo shrimp big enough to ride. Our guests are sometimes put off by our radical attempts to serve food that people enjoy. They do not wear relaxed fit pants which we encourage. I thought my mother might have to be taken to the hospital the first time I produced a bottle of Riesling (she's Baptist). We've also served Turducken, salmon and a damn fine turkey breast stuffed with andoullie and dirty rice. I've made corn muffins. I've experimented with dressing so good a recipe that should have served sixteen ended up barely covering six of us. I've baked pies in homemade praline crusts, made mini-bundt cakes and created a chocolate espresso sauce that kept people up for three days straight. There has been brisket. Basically, I have blown the lid off of the traditional holiday menu with increasing success. But this year?
Would meatloaf be wrong? Not just any meatloaf mind you but THIS MEATLOAF Bare Foot Contessa's Meatloaf. I personally used to despise meatloaf having always thought of it as a soggy pile of meat that was robbed of being a decent burger but this meatloaf? It is the stuff of dreams. And maybe some good bread and like garlic mashed potatoes or a sweet potato for my husband? And a huge heffalumping cake for dessert? Would it be selfish of me NOT to want to spend days in the kitchen? To eat a meal and not worry about four hundred pans of Calphalon that must be hand scrubbed?
Will Christ be offended if I serve turkey meatloaf? And maybe make some homeade cranberry sauce out of actual cranberries? I'll pray about it.
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