There's a meatloaf in the oven. I don't hold out much hope for it.

When i checked on it a little while ago, it looked like it might be promising. It's not floating in grease & it's retained its tough little football shape. It's sitting in there alongside a squash cassarole....which means that if it manages to turn out we'll be having one of those "retro" dinnes like 1950's housewives used to make.

If this meatloaf turns out, it will be a first for me. Meatoaf is the one thing I can't make. And it's embarrassing really....

I mean, I can bake a cake from scratch, I can bake bread and make pie crust, I can grill fish and fricassee chicken. I'm even told I make good coffee, though I wouldn't know, since I never touch the stuff myself. But, be it ever so humble, meatloaf is my waterloo.

Worse yet, all kinds of bizarre things happen to it. Sometimes it falls apart while cooking, other times a puddle of grease forms around it. Once it came out as hard as a brick: you could have hit somebody in the head with it and knocked them out.

The hell of it is, I used to be able to make it, following my mother's recipe. When I lived at home, and my mom worked on the 3-11 shift, I did a lot of the cooking. It was never great. It always had a tendancy to go a little cattywampus: dry, falling apart, etc. But it was edible. You could tell it was a meatloaf. Any time I tried making it outside my mother's kitchen it was just garbage.

This time, I tried the best of all the meatloaf remedies I have been given over the years. I used ground turkey, moist bread, an egg, and some grated carrots as fillers. So we'll see what comes out.

Hope The Hub isn't opposed to getting pizza.