Farmer's Loaf: A Freezer Cooking Recipe

Right, be prepared for a post that is not mine, but just a recipe I wanted to share.  This recipe, however, is worth sharing, as it gives you the most moist, yummy meat loaf!  My daughter absolutely adores this recipe.  The only thing I'll change the next time I make it is to cut down on the onions as the recipe does end up rather onion heavy for me and my husband.

So, let's get to it!

This recipe comes to us from, "Hazel Meyer's Freezer Cook Book", which was published in 1970 (I'd share a pic of the cover, but it is just green with simple text on the binding as the book is missing the dust jacket).  My husband got this cookbook for me for Christmas and I've had a ton of fun, so far, with it.  It is a cookbook that is all about food you can freeze (obviously) so it was an obvious book for me to reach for when I wanted to try some freezer cooking meals this last January and February.

Nice thing about this recipe?  Not only do you get meat in your diet, but also a bunch of veggies as well, so it's a nice "one pot" type of application.

I put my veggies through the food processor instead of a meat grinder and it worked, kinda.  I ended up with a bunch of potato chunks at the end of it.  I think next time I make it I'm going to par cook my potato a little bit to make it easier to process.  The chunks of potato I ended up with DID bake and were perfectly find in the finished product, but you did end up just biting into a chunk of potato which was a bit distracting while eating it.

So, onto the recipe!

Farmer's Loaf

• 3 large white potatoes, peeled and quartered
• 2 large onions, peeled and quartered
• 1 large green pepper, seeds removed and quartered
• 1 eating apple, peeled, cored and quartered
• 2 pounds ground beef
• 1/2 pound bulk pork sausage meat (I used Italian sausage)
• 1/2 cup fine bread crumbs or cracker crumbs
• 1 1/2 tsp salt
• 2 eggs, lightly beaten
• 1/2 cup heavy cream or undiluted evaporated milk

Process:

1.  Using medium or coarse blade, put vegetables and apple through a meat grinder (I used the food processor and just processed things till really fine if I could get it to that point).  Combine the mixture, including all of the juices with the other ingredients.  Mix thoroughly.  Pack into 2 buttered bread pans (9x5x3") and cover both pans with foil.  Bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour.

2.  Freezer portion:  Remove 1 pan, cool, chill in the refrigerator, then freeze.  Store up to 3 months (we've already gone through both loaves, so I say 3 months works *laugh*).

3.  Serving the unfrozen portion:  Uncover and continue to bake for 30 minutes.  Unmold, slice, and serve with tomato sauce or brown gravy (we used ketchup and it worked great).

4.  Serving the freezer portion:  Bake at 375 degrees for 1 hour.  Remove the foil and continue to bake for another 40 minutes.  Serve as above.

So, the next time you are looking at making a new meatloaf recipe, give this one a try!  It turned out really well for me and I plan on adding it to my freezer cooking rotation!

Enjoy!