When You Find a Nice Man Meatloaf

So listen, when I was a super cute, super not at all domestic 21 year old gal, I made one of the greatest friendships of my entire adult life. The friend that I made was Joey Jackson. Joey, unlike any friend I have ever had before was a grown up. We're talking full time job AND health insurance. He did grown up things like laundry, bought toilet paper not in a four pack, drank wine that didn't come from a box and knew all of the words to every great pop song. Needless to say, I thought and still think to this day that he is one of the greatest people ever. Some months into our friendship, he invited me over for Sunday dinner. Quickly, I gathered that dinner was not just to be eaten, but to be learned. This was my first ever cooking lesson so for good reason it is my first cooking blog. I give you the Joey Jackson "When You Find a Nice Man Make Him This Meatloaf" Meatloaf. I've this recipe paleo and not paleo depending on where I'm at with my life but today I'm posting the tried and true "Nice Man" recipe.

See that? That's meat. come on guys, its meatloaf! I'm pretty positive we are knew what we were getting into a few paragraphs back.

You'll need these things:
1 package of grass fed ground beef
16 oz.package of HOT sausage
1 Package of uncured bacon
1/4 cup of low fat milk
1 egg
1/4 of italian bread crumbs
some grated onion- like 1/8 cup or so
1/8 grated Parmesan
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp onion powder
1 tsp cayenne pepper
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp dried thyme
salt and pepper to taste
chili sauce

Do it This Way:
Preheat oven to 375 degrees. place bacon on baking sheet and cook for 10 minutes or until they look about half way to crispy town. Meanwhile,  mix  beef, sausage, milk, bread crumbs, egg, cheese and spices together in mixer. I used to just use my hands but they get really cold and my mixer does a better job because she isn't a baby.  mix until only slightly sticky and not runny at all, if you need to, add more bread crumbs if too runny or more milk if too dry.  Form Mixture into something that resembles a loaf and place on a foil lined baking sheet.  Pull bacon out of the oven and let cool slightly. Wrap bacon around the meat loaf and cook for 30 minutes. Remove meatloaf from oven and spread chili sauce using a brush, all over the whole thing. cook for 15 minutes. Remove and spread more chili sauce. Cook 8 minutes. Remove, crank the oven up to 425, spread chili sauce again and let that brown for about 7 minutes. It should be in the oven for about an hour total. Let Meatloaf rest for about 10 minutes. Serve with mashed potatoes because you can make appropriate choices.

So there you go. This is the first meal I ever cooked Gavin because I knew he was just about the nicest man from the moment I met him. After telling Joey about Gavin his first question was if I had made him meatloaf yet. Yes, yes I had. Thank you Joey for setting me up for success.