Whole, Roasted Artichoke

What on earth does one do with this mysterious vegetable?

YOU DEVOUR IT LIKE IT IS NEW YORK CITY AND YOU ARE THE HULK AFTER YOUR FILET MINON WAS SERVED MEDIUM WELL INSTEAD OF MEDIUM.

Small backstory. 

I have known I liked artichokes and I've even known how to eat some of them for as long as I can remember. My mom would boil them. Here's the issue with that: you don't really know how long they need to boil for and when was boiling ever preferred to roasting? Never.

Step one, cut off the stem. If you can cut it off so that it makes a flat place for the artichoke to stand on, great.

Now, cut off the top of the leaves. Just estimate. Not more than about the top 1/4, but you can judge. Now move it to a sheet of aluminum foil, enough to wrap it up into a bundle later.

Squeeze lemon onto the center and down into the crevices. Look at that perfect droplet…

Maybe drizzle some Oil of Olive. The extra card holder is best. (Card holder = virgin, for those of you who missed that.)

Salt and pepper.

Butter. 

Now wrap it up in a perfect little artichoke package of deliciousness. Put it in a 350º oven for about an hour.

Take it out, unwrap, and attempt to wait a few, until its handle-able. 

LOOK AT THIS.

I meant to take pictures of the leaves so you can see *how* to eat it, but, I got distracted by eating it. Basically, you just slide the "meat" off the leaves, just on the tips at the bottom. 

When you get to the center, the leaves will become super pale and impossible to eat. Just tear those off. Then you'll see this hair.

It's not really hair.

Dig it out, cast aside.

Once you dig it out, you'll have the center. I eat all of this part. It's the "artichoke heart" you hear so much about, you know, always hooking up with spinach and going for a dip.

I love this. It is super healthy, takes a while to eat, and is just flat delicious. It's a great alternative to the normal vegetables. 

Oh remember when I was talking about boiling it? Yeah. When you do that, you have to dip the bottoms of the leaves in melter butter, and I've even heard of people dipping it in mayonnaise  This method eliminates that step. The leaves are very flavorful. In fact, I'm going to go make one right now. For the third night in a row. 

I feel cleansed from the meatloaf now. 

My Adventures in Meatloaf

Hey guys. Been a long time. Here are some excuses reasons:

1. For a while, I was actually really sucking it up in the kitchen. I got way consumed with other things and just wasn't doing much there in the creative department. I had another  creative outlet. I opened an Etsy shop, called Etched Heart. I design word art, greeting cards, bookmarks, lots of stuff! So my need to be creative in the kitchen was lessened. But now I'm back.

Two weeks ago I spent Sunday afternoon making a gigantic quantity of food. I made brown rice with onions and peppers, quiche, and salads in a jar. I should make a blog post about salads in a jar. Okay fine here's an overview:

This is a bad picture because the jar is frosty, having been in my fridge. This is a concept recipe, as usual.

1. Dressing on bottom.

2. Heaviest toppings next, like meat, broccoli, carrots, peppers, tomatoes. Ones that will still taste good having sat in dressing. Continue with those in layers, then nuts and cheese above them (this is not that important, it's just what I always do).

3. Lettuce on top, far from the dressing. STUFF YOUR JAR FULL OF LETTUCE. The less air, the better. 

Rules of salad jar eating:

1. One does not shake the jar to instantly go from a lovely, layered, pinteresty meal to a perfectly blended salad in a jar. No. You must dump it onto a plate. Here's how mine looked: 

Oh and yes that is the quiche I spoke of earlier, and let me tell you. Normally I could take or leave the crust, but pictured is the roll out pie crust from Trader Joe's and if anyone tries to take it from me, I will leave them with so many evil glares they will be paranoid for the rest of their life. (So, it's good pie crust.) 

So, meatloaf. 

First, some rambling a story. 

I don't like meatloaf. I, as you might recall, have also decided I don't really love processed food but also realize that sometimes we have to be realistic. So, the meal above, you see, was my lunch. I made Husband some homemade pizzas (flatbread, sauce, cheese, pepperoni, oven. Look out!). For dinner that night I had whole wheat flatbread with avocado spread on it and a tomato cut up on top with black pepper, and also an entire roasted artichoke (so amazing, I literally tore it up [and if you've ever eaten artichoke, you know that I used the accurate meaning of the word 'literally']). For him, I took tortellini Alfredo with chardonnay apple chicken sausage and shaved parmesan on top. Yeah. I just decided I can't eat like he does, and he won't eat like I do, so…until we have children, the 2 meal thing is fine. But you see, I aim to please my sweet husband, and though he actually has excellent taste in food, he is also quite capable of enjoying the NASCAR of foods (not that a good box of Velveeta was ever passed on by me, but, you know). So in my endless efforts to be the best wife ever, I decided to tackle one of my most hated entities: meatloaf. But I had 2 goals!!!!!!!!!! 1. That my meatloaf would NOT be dry and 2. That Husband would like it. 

"Why do you hate meatloaf, Cari?"

Here's why. 

1. Why would you ever put the word "loaf" next to the word "meat?" Gross. 

2. I really don't go bananas over ground meat in general, I mean, I love tacos but that's a much smaller quantity, and meatballs can be delicious but somehow balls of meat is less gross that a loaf of meat in my mind. 

3. Gross, I just think it's gross. And listen! Disclaimer. If you have me over and serve me meatloaf, you will not know that I don't like it. I will eat it and say thank you and you don't have to worry about catering to me. 

So whatever, I don't like meatloaf. But when I called Josh and left a message asking for his sauce of choice for meatloaf, he called back and sounded just like the dog on the Beggin' Strips commercias. Bacon???? Meatloaf????? Yes. The same. So though my soul was sad to be making this monstrosity, my heart was happy to please my husband. 

But of course you KNOW I did not slather ketchup on top of some weakly seasoned meat and call it a day, right? 

Of course not. 

Here are my ingredients, minus the onion which I'd already chopped. 

Now listen, meatloaf is really also a concept recipe. Here's the basic steps.

1. Mash up meat, small amount of sauces, eggs, breadcrumbs, and seasonings. 

2. Mash it into a loaf pan.

3. Say 3 Hail Mary's and 5 Our Father's and perhaps you'll be forgiven (I'm not Catholic and I don't think making meatloaf requires forgiveness, just laugh and move on.) 

4. Slather some sauce on top. Ketchup if you must. Something else if you can.

5. Bake it at 350 for 1 hour. 

Want to go Italian? Use italian seasonings, parmesan cheese, maybe stuff it with mozzarella like I did, and top with quality marinara sauce. Maybe add some pepperonis as you are probably serving this to a severe carnivore. 

Southern BBQ? Get your BBQ sauce of choice and season that meat with chili sauce, cayenne, onions, and lots of black pepper. Oh, and bacon. Probably bacon.

Southwestern/Tex Mex? Use jalapeños, cheddar, and green chiles. Slather with taco sauce or enchilada sauce. I'm sure they wouldn't say no to bacon, either. 

But here's what I did.

 I chopped slightly more than 1/2 an onion.

 I melted butter in the pan so I could sauté the onion.

 Oh, I also had my ~2 lbs of meat sitting out so that they wouldn't be so darn cold when I went to mix everything with my hands. I used a combination of "meatloaf" meat (yes this grossed me out), but all that is is a combination of pork, veal, and beef, and added some extra beef to fill it out.

 I put breadcrumbs in the bow, and poured them out, because I forgot to beat the eggs. 

 There, I beat the eggs. I added a splash of milk. 

 I stopped cooking the onions when they looked like this. 

 I added this crap to the meat (except the chili sauce from Trader Joe's that is not crap.)

 Then I added this, because mustard. 

 Then I sprinkled it with parmesan, because Husband.

I also added cracked pepper, sea salt, cayenne, and then the onions.

 Then I greased my loaf pan and highly doubted it would all fit and instantly began planning to make meatballs with the leftover.

 Then I mixed it up and filled half the loaf pan, then I added 2 sticks of mozzarella 

(this is real mozzarella, not string cheese)

 Then, to my great surprise, the rest of it all fit on top.

 Now, slather time, I used Jack Daniels Honey Smokehouse sauce to make Husband happy.

 Then, I put bacon on top. Now I saw pictures of these meatloaves with super crispy awesome bacon on top that they claimed would cook like that if you just put it on top and left it in the oven, uncovered, for an hour. I was doubtful, but didn't care, because why wouldn't he want extra bacon fat anyway?

 But the bacon looked gross so I cracked some pepper on top. Much better.

Then I waited an hour. Oh, and the oven was on 350. So I waited an hour and made mashed potatoes, cleaned the house, mourned my arteries, and finally it was time to take it out.

Remember my 2 goals? 1. NOT DRY 2. Husband likes.

 Goal #1 was successful. It was not dry. 

But as suspected, the bacon on top caused a lot of extra liquid. 

So I poured the fat out and sliced it and it fell apart, but who cares, it wasn't dry. The cheese was good and the bacon was okay but definitely not crispy, but did add a nice flavor.

So these were our complete meals. I ate the meatloaf because I had, after all, spent all that time and used ingredients I could tolerate, and though I would say it was "good meatloaf," I still really did not like it and will not eat any more of it.

As for goal #2? Yes, Husband liked it. He also liked the mashed potatoes but there's nothing special about how I made those (use cream cheese, mash with a masher, not with an electric mixer) so it's not worth a post. Now Husband has leftovers and I can check off "meatloaf" on the list of domestic duties. 

Seriously meatloaf is gross.