Tag Archives: oh dear

Taco Cat

18 Apr

Ok, so, last week I wrote about the whole getting beer on the cat incident, for which the cat made me pay dearly. This week I can top that, much to the cat’s dismay.

It all started when I decided to get tacos for dinner. There was quite a bit of sauce on the tacos, making them messy to eat. So I’m sitting at home eating my messy taco, sauce on my hands, when the cat starts making the noise he makes when he is about to be sick. He was in the carpeted living room so I sprang into action, I wanted to nab him and move him to the kitchen floor to be sick on the lino, a much easier clean up job for me.

Seeing me coming for him he runs to the bedroom, also a carpeted room, undeterred I follow and scoop him up by grabbing him around his middle and unceremoniously hauling ass to the kitchen.

To make sure he didn’t go for the carpet again I kept my hands around his sides until he was done. Once I knew he wasn’t going to be sick I removed my hands only to discover that there was no longer any taco sauce on them…it was all on the cat’s fur.

Yup, two hand prints of sauce on each side of his body, wrapping around his middle.

I feel I made the choice anyone would in that moment, I washed my hands and went back to my taco, no one likes a cold taco!

The cat, being severely unimpressed sat across from me, with his back to me, sitting straighter than I have ever seen him sit. For the rest of the evening whatever I did he sat in my line of site, back to me, completely upright. Like he was making a point of ignoring me and he wanted to make sure I was aware of it.

It’s possible he picked up on being so dramatic from me…maybe…

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Meatloaf…Of A Sort…

17 Jan

Does it still get to be called meatloaf if it isn’t, say, quite a loaf shape? Or any shape…

Deep thoughts to be pondered over here tonight.

When I was home at Christmas I took a pic of my mom’s recipe for meatloaf. I don’t know why meatloaf gets such a bad rap, my mom’s is really good. She was kind enough to make it when I was home and when her back was turned I took a pic of the recipe and smugly thought I could recreate it for myself anytime I wanted.

I really should know better by now. *rolls eyes*

The only thing I swapped in the recipe was Panko instead of bread crumbs, though it turns out mom actually uses wheat germ (not sure what that is, so I know it isn’t in my cupboard!). Other than that I did everything the recipe card said.

My cooking ability being what it is the meatloaf turned in to a red in the middle, setting off my smoke detector twice, mess. Oops?

Before the hour of cooking was up I heard sizzling sounds, the liquid from the meatloaf was spitzing over the edge of the loaf pan and sizzling. I started to freak out, what if it caught on fire or something? So I put a cookie sheet underneath the loaf pan to catch any flying liquid and then nervously sat staring at the oven for the remaining 15 minutes wondering if the cat and I were far enough away to not be harmed if it blew up. When the timer went off I took the loaf pan out oh so carefully (so as not to spill all that liquid that magically appeared…seriously, what is that? I used extra lean ground beef!), poured out the liquid, hastily put everything down so I could wave my oven mitt under the smoke detector to shut it off…fyi, there was no smoke so I don’t know why it went off. Then I cut in to the middle of the loaf, took a peek and swore because oh man so much red still left in there.

Obviously my oven’s 350 degrees is not the same as my mother’s oven’s 350 degrees.

I put it back in for another 20 minutes, nervously hovering and peeking through the window in the oven door…cause ya know, that’ll make everything work out better lol. When the 20 minutes was up I pulled the loaf pan out, poured out more liquid, waved the oven mitt under the smoke detector again, swore a bit louder this time, cut in to a different part of the meatloaf, discovered pink (which is a downgrade from red, so better I guess…), and put the whole thing back in the oven. sigh.

When I next pulled it out I had gotten smarter and put the oven fan on high so yay for no more smoke detector going off! I cut the meat loaf in a new spot, by this point the poor thing was in pieces, and thought it looked cooked through. Finally!

Totally got ahead of myself though. When I put the spatula in and pulled up a piece the bottom half stayed in the pan. Ok, fine, so that first piece won’t be pretty, that’s all good. Um, yeah, all of the lower half of the loaf stayed in the pan because while the top half became meatloaf-esque the bottom half did not. It was more uh, ground beef with some stuff mixed in it that I wasn’t sure was totally cooked.

I was fed up by this point so the upper half of the loaf got pulled out and put on a plate, the lower half that did not choose to take form got put in to a frying pan where I cooked it a bit longer, juuuuuust in case…hey now, no judging, nobody over here is wanting food poisoning thanks.

So this is what I ended up with…

There was more of the meatloaf that was sort-of loaf shaped, it just didn’t make it in to the picture because I’d already admitted defeat and put it in a tupperware container. I have been told the ground meat on the left would be good in a chili, I was thinking of using it as my breakfast protein for the next couple days and tossing some in with some scrambled eggs, or making a wrap or something…

The meatloaf that is sort-of loaf shaped is slowly being eaten. I ate some as-is and it was good. I also made a cold meatloaf sandwich and it was good then also. So, the flavour is right, the meat is cooked, it just didn’t take shape the way it would have for my mother.

I’m thinking maybe I had too much in the pan. It was quite domed above the edge of the loaf pan, but I thought it would be ok because my mom warned me it would shrink down, so I thought maybe it was supposed to start high…I’m now realizing that logic may be flawed and perhaps I should have either (1) used less meat (in my defence I used the amount specified in the recipe) or (2) split the mixture into 2 loaf pans.

It would be nice if these simple, logical thoughts, came to me while I am cooking, instead of the day after. 😉

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