Day 243 - Italian Meatloaf

Time to use up the extra bread crumb & cheese mixture from the stuffed mushrooms earlier this week. I cook like this a lot . . . see what I have and make something yummy out of it. This is one of the easiest dinners!

Ingredients:

I don't make meatloaf regularly so I started with a recipe from my Betty Crocker cook book and used it as a guideline for baking temperatures and proportions of ingredients.

I mixed all the bread crumb & cheese mixture with about .75 lbs of ground turkey, a little Parmesan cheese, more Italian seasoning, milk and one egg and it looked like I needed more dry ingredients, so I added a 1/2 cup of oats. (this took 2 minutes or less)

Next, since I had about a half of a regular recipe I decided to use 2 mini-loaf pans, plus these cook quicker

After I packed in the meatloaves, I topped each one with a couple of tablespoons of marinara sauce and they were ready to bake (total prep time at this point was probably 5 minutes)

I baked the meatloaves for about 45 minutes at 375 F (per the recipe I used) and then took them out of the oven and let them cool slightly.

The meatloaf was so moist and the marinara sauce worked great (Quinn was questions my Italian meatloaf and really thought I should use some ketchup on top - but once he tasted it, he was convinced).

Since it was Italian meatloaf I served it with some whole grain pasta tossed in olive oil & Parmesan cheese.

This was a great dinner and something I am certainly going to make again soon!