Dinner Tonight

Last week I saw a video on Facebook for a meatloaf that had cheese in the middle and the pan was lined with bacon and the bacon was folded over the meatloaf. I sent it to Nicole and said “I’m making this next week!” and her response was “Yes! Thank you!”

I didn’t have a recipe. The video was advertising a cookbook but . . who can’t make a meatloaf? This one had mustard mixed in with the meat and then you put half the meat mixture in the pan that was already lined with bacon. Then you put cheese, chopped pickles and chopped tomatoes so I know it was supposed to be kinda “cheeseburgery”. Chad would die before he would eat a pickle so I chopped bell pepper and cooked it with the onions, then added the cooked veggies to the meat. Also, I know the bacon isn’t going to get crisp in the oven, at least on the sides and bottom but my plan is to cook it from about 1:30 p.m. til time to go get Addie at school at about 2:45. I’ll take it out, let it cook for a few minutes, drain off the grease, hopefully get it out of the pan intact, put it on a rack over a baking dish to catch the grease, and bake it sitting on top of the rack. My even better preference is that Chad would put it in the smoker without any smoking pellets because the grease can just drain into the catch tray in the smoker but I have no idea what time Chad will be home. We never know where Chad is or when he will be home.

There’s also mac & cheese. Yes . . what diet? Addie has been sick. In fact, when I pick her up at school, I’ll take her to the doctor where Nicole will meet us. She’s had a cough that sounds kinda bad to me but she doesn’t feel bad and isn’t running fever. When she and I were leaving gymnastics last night, she said “Granny, I need to go to the emergency room. I’m coughing. My throat hurts and half of my nose hurts!” I called Nicole and told her that Addie felt like she needed to go to the ER and explained the symptoms. Nicole said “Tell her if she goes to the ER, she will get a shot in her butt AND in her arm and they will take blood.” I passed that along to Addie and she decided she would wait til today and go to the doctor ONLY if I promised she wouldn’t get shots and blood drawn there. I told her I could not promise that but it was less likely.

She hardly coughed during the night, said her throat was not hurting this morning. I think she had just worked so hard at gymnastics that her throat was dry but her cough still sounded bad enough that I’m glad Nicole is taking her to the doctor.

You know what else I thought about? Tomorrow is the school play. If she’s sick and cannot go . . after I made this trip here again . . it would not be funny!

The camping trip isn’t looking so good because of the weather but one thing for sure, if anyone (including Granny) is halfway sick, we do not need to be sleeping in a tent in a thunderstorm.