Spicy Italian Sausage Meatloaf

Ah, meatloaf. One of my many favorite foods. It's also one of my favorite things to make, though mine is usually a combination of things I have lying around and ground beef (or sometimes, to Collin's dismay, ground turkey). I rarely follow the meatloaf recipe I keep in my recipe book and this is probably why Collin says that meatloaf isn't his favorite. I say that it's a hunk of meat with delicious things baked in with some sort of sauce slathered on top. What exactly is there to not like?

This particular meatloaf is a nice little medley of meats, one being Italian sausage (duh) and I just don't think anything out there can be ruined by adding Italian sausage so I hopped on this one. I'm not going to lie, I was a bit salty about the fact that I hadn't thought of this, so I was hoping I would hate it. *crosses fingers*

Cooking this recipe felt more like what I'm used to so it went pretty smoothly (no lost ingredients this time - sorry future Andrew). I love that nearly everything was finely chopped up in the food processor, even though I found out Andrew hates the sound. So he screamed pretty much the whole time I was making this which, thanks to the food processor doing pretty much all of the prep work, was not very long. The longest part about making this was the cook time and it goes in the oven. In other words, this recipe leaves ample time for alcohol - err, I mean spending time with my kids.

I served this with a salad, because baby weight, and ate my salad first like a lady. When meatloaf time rolled around, I braced myself. This was it. The moment I'd been waiting for ever since I spotted the words Italian Sausage Meatloaf and the feelings of immediate lust/envy jolted through me. I took a bite. Damn. I almost wish I had never laid eyes on this one because Holy Jesus this is the best meatloaf ever. Ever. No, your grandmother's is not better. I don't care if it's been in the family for generations, sorry. This was so good, I almost said "fuck it" to the baby weight and consumed the entire pan in one sitting. But I didn't. And it's sort of because I have learned this thing called self control....but mostly because I packed it for lunch tomorrow and now I have something to look forward to. And I seriously can't wait.

I have no idea how people make meatloaf pictures look pretty.