Cheese Stuffed Meatloaf

Well, I'm all caught up now and I'm hoping to keep it that way! I'm also trying to make our meals more well-rounded. We usually have two sides, but often it's rice and bread, or mashed potatoes and corn. I learned that you aren't apparently supposed to mix too many "starches" and corn should be considered a starch for these purposes. Lee grew up with a vegetable with every meal and doesn't feel a meal is complete without one. I really can't argue with that since I know it's better to do it that way, I just never was really used to it. I haven't gotten good at it over the past few months because it's overwhelming to me to learn so many new things at one time, so I decided today that I'm going to make it a goal to make sure I have a salad with every meal. Once that is a habit for me, I'll start adding the second veg and making sure the meals are well-rounded. I figured salads would be the easier place for me to start and I can get more variety into our diet faster that way.

Today I did have a salad for each of us with the meal. Lee doesn't like uncooked tomatoes (something he doesn't like, shocking!!!), so his salad didn't have tomatoes, but we both had mixed field greens, cucumber, and mushrooms. I had Catalina dressing, Lee had Ranch. He just loves ranch. I'm going to have to perfect a recipe for that before we move to England because it's very hard to find over there.

Moving on to the main dish...today I made cheese stuffed meatloaf with garlic roasted tomato Rice a Roni. This was really good. The meatloaf recipe called for 1/4 cup chopped onion, but I would leave that out next time. Lee thought it was a bit too much and I agree since the pasta sauce I used had chunks of onion in it as well.

I wasn't sure how the layers of cheese would turn out in the meat, and I probably could have spread it more evenly, but it still was really good. We both topped it with Parmesan cheese.

The rice was also really good. It went well with the tomato flavour in the meatloaf. I'd make that again as well.