Dill Pickle Meatloaf and Garlic and Rosemary Mashed Potatoes

Dill Pickle Meatloaf  Rating: 8

What's a girl to do?!  If you've read our Pickle Soup post, you know I have 5 grieving jars of botched home canned pickles sulking in my pantry.  I must put them out of their misery!

We made several changes to the recipe.  We used 1 cup old fashioned or rolled oats in place of the bread, 1/3 cup chopped pickles in the meatloaf, added one grated medium carrot, 4 finely chopped kale leaves, and ground turkey rather than beef.  For the sauce we doubled it and used demerara sugar in place of brown sugar and cut it by 1/3 (1 Tbsp., and 1 tsp. for the doubled sauce).  I also upped the amount of chopped pickles to a heaping 1/2 cup (for the doubled sauce).

The recipe had us bake it in a 8x8 pan which felt a little weird to Keri.  It sort of lost it's meatloaf appearance and made her think of it more of a meat cake.  Mmmmm...meat cake. 

But after pushing past that it came out really good.

It was tasty.  We liked it and the kids ate it up.  Keri who loves pickles and has tried selling her first born for extra pickles on her burger would have tripled all things pickle in this recipe; however, not everyone is as enthusiastic as she.  But two good things happened here: 1.) a good dinner and 2.) we used up a jar of pickles!

The meatloaf held together well and made plenty more than 4 servings.  So it you like meatloaf sandwiches or love it as leftovers, hooray for you.

What better to serve up meat with than potatoes?

Johnny Garlic's Famous Garlic and Rosemary Mashed Potatoes  Rating: 8

We halved this recipe and have plenty for leftovers.  We did use 2 1/2 tsp. minced rosemary for the halved recipe since our rosemary is not very strong.  It's an old plant and it has been dry this year so the oils are not so pungent.  We also used whole milk in place of skim because that's what we have.  And we did not have Yukon gold potatoes so we used red skin potatoes.

The adults liked the creamy mashed potatoes, although, Keri would reduce the amount of white pepper if she makes it again.  It had kick and she found it overpowered the rosemary.  We did have chives but forgot to add them before taking the photo.