Which Came First, The Meatloaf Or The Egg?

I’m going to admit something highly controversial and I hope you’ll still respect me. I like meatloaf. Specifically, I like my mother’s meatloaf, but other kinds will do, as long as it’s accompanied by mashed potatoes, of course. It’s my comfort food.

When I went from dorm living to an apartment in college, I had a hankering and realized I could make it myself for the first time. I called home for the recipe. My parents were out, so I made my sister hunt it down and read it to me over the phone. It’s safe to say she was not team meatloaf at the time, and I received some good-natured sisterly ribbing about my request and overall sense of taste. Years later, I enjoyed full vindication when she called me from college, to ask for Mom’s meatloaf recipe. She gets huge props for reaching out to me and not Mom though, openly acknowledging we had gone full circle on that.

Meatloaf rose in my estimation when I was a kid. Days before Thanksgiving one year, my mom threw her back out and was bed bound, altering all our plans. We were to have traveled for the holiday, so didn’t have any traditional meal fixings at our house. Dad to the rescue. He made a meatloaf but shaped it like a turkey, and classed it up by covering it with a puff pastry. Did he invent Meatloaf Wellington?

But meatloaf gained legendary status in my family thanks to my uncle. When he and my aunt were newly married, they hosted a little dinner party, one of their first in their new home. You can guess what was on the menu. My aunt got unexpectedly held up at work, so my uncle had to make it. He’d never done that before, so she talked him through it over the phone. Everything seemingly went fine. They brought it out to the table and were serving slices to their guests. My aunt became confused and concerned though when her knife hit something really hard in the middle. It turned out to be an egg, still in its shell. When she had told my uncle how to make it, her last instruction was “And be sure to put an egg in it.” so that’s exactly what he did. Is there such a thing as a comfort story? If so, this is one of mine. Every time I crack an egg into ground beef or turkey, I smile.