What's for dinner: Meat loaf and Mashed potatoes

So the other night I made one of my husbands favorite dinners, meatloaf. Its the recipe my mom made, and one of the first dinners he had at my house when we first started dating. I was around 14 years old. He swore my mom made it best, little did he know, I made it a lot of the time! Finally he believed me and still loves it 10 years later.

Here is a picture, and I apologize, I tried to make it look as pretty as possible, but I don't cook food to look pretty, I cook food to TASTE GOOD! :)



Meatloaf Recipe:
*2 pounds ground beef
*1 envelope Lipton onion soup mix
*3/4 cup dry plain bread crumbs
*2 eggs
*3/4 cup water
*1/3 BBQ Sauce
*1 teaspoon garlic powder

-Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
-In a large bowl, combine all ingredients. Try not to mix too much, the more you mix the tougher the meat will get. Just make sure it's all combined well.
-Spray with cooking spray a 13x9 pan, and put the meat into pan.
-Bake 1 hour or until done, let stand 10 minutes.

Ps. This makes for AMAZING meatloaf sandwiches for the next day for lunch!

Mashed Potatoes:

I experiment with mashed potatoes all the time. I always add new things. And I don't add exact ingredients into it. SO I'll tell you the "recipe" for what I do.

For two people I use 1 large russet potato. Yes ONE. It makes exactly two servings of the size you see in the picture. So obviously if you are making it for more than 2 people, add more potatoes.

I dice my potatoes in large chunks, and boil under tender, give or take 15 minutes. I then add it to a medium size bowl, and add a splash of milk (or buttermilk if I have it, I prefer buttermilk to regular milk but I don't always have it), about a tablespoon of butter, a tablespoon of cream cheese, salt and pepper to taste, and I also like to add garlic powder. Then with an electric mixer I combine. Add more of any of these ingredients to get it to taste the way you like.

Hope that made sense to you all. I hardly measure anything. A sprinkle of this, a handful of that...that's how I cook for the most part!

Anyway, if you try the recipes, I hope you enjoy it! Definitely yummy on a cold night.