Instead of going out to dinner, buy good food. Cooking at home shows such affection. In a bad economy, it’s more important to make yourself feel good.
Ina Garten
Sounds pretty ordinary, right? Divine mashed potatoes and green beans from the same book all-time favorites for a great football play-off day dinner. I didn’t change a thing as far as the meatloaf goes, but since I didn’t have truffle butter I added a touch of truffle olive oil enough to have the slightest hint of truffle anything, a real flavor boost. I’ll have to find truffle butter one of these days. My one issue with the potatoes is that I prefer the texture of “riced” potatoes rather than the mixer method which always seems too glue-y textured to me so I slowly blended the liquids into the riced potatoes..
The green beans with gremolata not far from what I make from time to time and I also did not change her recipe the least bit so I’ll have to attach links to the recipes if possible.
http://www.thelittlehouseinthecityblog.com/2012/12/apologies-to-ina-garten.html
For the meatloaf my slight change was that I needed more than two stalks of celery for the required measurement of 1-1/2 cups and 1 onion and a half for that ingredient measurement. I loved the garlic sauce and I also poured a little of the pan juices over the meat and potatoes.
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/1770-house-meatloaf-recipe/index.html