Meatloaf, Schmeatloaf

Have I told you about my meatloaf disaster? I bought the makings of meatloaf. I don't even LIKE meatloaf but was feeling all lovely and good-wifey towards The Hub at the grocery store on Saturday morning.

Saturday afternoon rolls on, The Hub has been out coaching lacrosse all day, and I begin to feel antsy. By the time practice is over, around 5pm, I should be starting on dinner but I am in full wall-climbing mode at this stage. The Hub calls to say he and the team are stopping for a few beers before coming home. I wangle for an invitation, and get one. But it's just the coach and his boys and I'd be an awkward addition so I mentally praise myself as a martyr and skip it. Who wants to go somewhere that they had to wangle an invitation to anyway?

I deliberately did NOT buy wine at the grocery store that day, as I'm on a no-smoking health kick. Yoga, brisk walks, lotsa veggies, limited drinking and NO SMOKING. By 6.30pm the store that sells the wine is firmly closed until Monday morning and my health kick sounds like a big load of horseshit to me. I WANT A DRINK AND A CIGARETTE.

So now I am at home, and I start making the damn meatloaf. You're supposed to cook for your husband with love, aren't you? Well that night I was sewing that meatloaf with the seeds of my discontent. I was cooking in anger.

There I am, half following a Rachel Ray recipe and half winging it. I have never made meatloaf. I don't LIKE meatloaf. But I love the man who loves meatloaf, dammit, and I am slamming things down on the kitchen counter, mixing the loaf ingredients as if I were choking a zombie when himself calls. He is finishing up with the team, do I want to meet him out? Praise God and baby Jesus, I have that uncooked hateloaf wrapped up, lip-gloss slapped on my lips and the door slamming behind me in record time. We meet, have a couple drinks, a nice walk around the city... gads but it's good to be out. And no cigs. (Thank The Hub for that one, I woulda caved and bought a pack at the first pub.)

Which brings us to Sunday.

Meatloaf. The Sequel.

Hub is back out lacrossing all day, everything for dinner is already half made, which makes it easier. Now I am cooking with love in my heart and a song on my lips. I make the call to go for the labor intensive but yummy sounding mushroom, gorgonzola cream sauce in lieu of gravy. Mmmmm. Fine idea, Rachel Ray, fine idea.

It's all done, staying warm on the stove top. All I need to do is pop the meatloaf in the oven when The Hub walks through the door, which I do. All is going according to plan. Except....

I turned the heat UP under the covered sauce pot, instead of off.

Instead of keeping warm, my delicious creamy, rich, thick, amazing sauce is quietly burning up. Slowly incinerating itself beyond recognition. The one thing that was 100% cooked with love. Gone. The part of the meal I was looking forward to most. Kaput. The stuff I planned to cover all other foods with, that which the rest of the food in the meal was simply a vehicle for - a blackened, gloppy, crusty mess. My beautiful gravy, that Rachel and I collaborated on, looks like the sludge covering the 4th circle of hell.

{a moment of silence please}

Chris enjoyed the meatloaf. He ate it with ketchup. And he's been having hateloaf leftovers for every meal the last two days, poor guy. I won't touch the stuff. It's poison to me now.

-k.