Meat loaf

I don't know why I've never tried this before.  It was really easy and stretched a pound and a half of meat so far that Bonzo and Wrigglebottom had less than half of it for dinner last night.  I had some with salad for lunch and it was lush as my friend gloshawk would say.

1)  Heat oven to 180C (about 160C) for fan ovens;
2)  Mix 225g of white bread cut up into cubes with 1 egg and 125ml milk in a large mixing bowl.  At this stage in the week there's usually not much bread left in our house so I raided the fridge and used frozen breadcrumbs and a couple of crumpets (after I'd defrosted them).  Leave to soak whilst you gather the rest of the ingredients.
3) Peel and chop a medium onion, 2 sticks of celery and a small bunch of parsley finely.
4)  Mash the bread mixture (didn't have to do much of that in my case)
5) Add the veg and herbs to the bread mixture.
6)  Add225g of minced pork or sausage meat and 450g of minced beef. I used some sausage meat that I had in the freezer left over from Christmas.  At Forest Stores even the sausage meat and mince are better than the supermarkets.
7) Finally add a pinch of dried mixed herbs, 2 teaspoons of Dijon mustard and a tablespoon of Worcestershire sauce, salt and pepper.
8)  Mix it altogether.  You could use a wooden spoon but honestly it's much quicker and easier with your hands.
9)  Grease a loaf tin with and line the bottom with greaseproof paper.  The original recipe doesn't say this but I left about half the loaf in the tin when I turned it out because I didn't do this.
10)  Tip the mixture into the tin and bake in the oven for 45 minutes.
11)  Use a palette knife to loosen the meat loaf and turn it out.

I served it with mash potato (must give my tips on really good mash some time), carrots and gravy.

I give it a 4.5 for prep.  Would have been a 5 except for the greased loaf tin.  Wrigglebottom gave it a 10 (think that might have been for the mash though) and Bonzo a 7. OK for a school night he said which was a bit rich as I was going out and generally the deal is that I don't cook if I'm not going to eat!  So 13 overall and I will work on it to make it better than a school night dinner!

Thanks to my friend Vaunda who fed 8 of us on homemade lasagne, risotto and a selection of desserts last night.  Delish!

Bon appetit!