Making Memories and Messes: Meatloaf

So I hated Meatloaf growing up for several reasons. (Don't worry, I already confessed to my momma!) However, when I was back in Wisconsin visiting my parents, my mom served up meatloaf and to my surprise, I LOVED it! I even went back for seconds! I introduced it to my family a couple weeks ago and they loved it also. In fact, they were disappointed that I only made half a recipe!  It was so moist and delicious....after a couple revisions, I came up with a little different recipe yet. So here is the recipe with my couple revisions, let me know if you try it:

Marvelous Meatloaf

2 pounds ground turkey

2 eggs beaten

2 teaspoons onion powder 

Several stalks of green onion, chopped up

Several stalks of fresh chives, chopped up

(My kids don't care for chunks of onion.)

2 cups oatmeal

1 teaspoon minced garlic

2 teaspoons Worchestershire sauce

1/2 cup milk

1/4 cup bbq sauce 

(Our favorite is Sweet Baby Ray's)

Top with BBQ sauce.

Mix together. 

It will fill two bread pans.

Bake at 420 degrees for 1 hour.

I do a double batch of this and freeze one half.

Here are some pics of my Miss Bob helping me tonight:

Frugal Recipe for Dishwasher Detergent

So, as most of you know, I have been on this extreme frugal lifestyle. I have been that way most of my life, but decided to take up more of a challenge in the past six months. To the point where we have been able to save on almost everything you can think of!

The latest one is dishwasher detergent. I have had this recipe, actually two recipes for months. But was waiting for my Cosco-sized detergent to run out. I tried this recipe in my dishwasher this morning and it worked great! After much demand on Facebook for the recipe, I decided I better post it! I don't know where I found this recipe online, so I can't give kudos unfortunately:

Mix equal parts of borax and washing soda (found in the laundry detergent line). Increase the washing soda if your water is hard. 


There was no notation of how much to put in, I just filled one of the little cups in my dishwasher where the soap goes. It worked great!

Here is another recipe that I have not tried yet, but I found it on Grocery Shrink. This gal has a wonderul list on things that you can do yourself to save money. Here is this recipe:

1 cup salt
2 cups baking soda (the one you bake with, not like the recipe above.)
2 cups borax


Mix altogether and store in a airtight container.
Use 1 teaspoon in each soap compartment in your dishwasher.

Tutorial: How to Make Frozen Burritos

So if you have been reading my blog for long, you know that I am trying to completely go back to the basics and cook/bake everything from scratch. As a result, you don't have a whole lot of "fast" foods for when you are in a hurry. So now I am working on making some things that are fast to have in the freezer for those times.

This first one is frozen burritos for on the go! So here is my pictorial tutorial (say that ten times fast!):

To start, you need tortilla shells, refried beans mixture or whatever for your filling and cheese. 

Now, we usually make our own tortilla shells from scratch. But wouldn't you know it, we were out! So I picked up some that were on sale. For our filling, I used refried beans, rice and olives.

These are small shells, so I used my small cookie scoop to put the beans on.

Two scoops...

 Then some cheese....

 Fold one...

Fold two...

 Fold three...

 Fold four...

Place on cookie sheet...

 Rereat above steps till you have a full cookie sheet...

 Place in the freezer for about 20 minutes...till they are firm.

When they come out, they should hold their form like this...

Somehow I deleted my last pic, but what I did was then place the 20 burritos in two freezer bags. Wrote the contents and the date and popped them in the freezer to be used later!! 

When you are ready to eat them, take out as many as you need, put them in the microwave or toaster oven and Enjoy!!!