Meatloaf, Beetloaf

Some years ago, in book group, we read The Five Love Languages.  Towards the end, the author councils the reader to have an honest talk with his or her partner to try and determine their level of happiness and what you, as their partner, might do to increase that level.  I had a frank conversation with Kent.  It went something like this.

Me: "On a scale from one to ten, how full is your love bucket?" (or some other liquid hauling container, I don't remember exactly what the author called it.)
Kent: "I would say about a nine."
Me: (Thinking to myself that nine out of ten is not so bad.  I was making my husband happy!) "Nine is a pretty high score.  What could I do to completely fill your love bucket?  Bring you up to a ten?"
Kent: "I really like meatloaf.  You could make meatloaf more often."
Meatloaf!  I was only falling short in not preparing this simple meal.  So I asked,
"How often would you like meatloaf?  Once a week?  Every other week?  Once a month?"
Kent: "You don't have to make it very often.  How about once every other month?"
I was going to get off with making meatloaf only six times in the whole year and I would filling Kent's love bucket.  How easy is that?!

I think I have been pretty good about making meatloaf, especially when the weather turns cold.  Meatloaf is sort of an autumn/winter food.  In addition, as I have been working on food storage, I have had the thought that I should can some meatloaf so that when the zombie apocalypse occurs, I can still fill my husband's love bucket.  While looking through canning recipes recently, I found an instruction that said, in essence, make your favorite meatloaf recipe, put it in the jars, and then pressure can them for 90 minutes.  I waited for ground beef to go on sale, and then I made meatloaf.

As it was cooking, it smelled delicious.  This was encouraging to me.  When it was all finished, however, it looked weird.  I know we eat with our eyes first, then with our taste buds, so then I was bit discouraged.  But I put the jars on the shelves downstairs and told myself the next time we were going to have meatloaf, we would try a jar.

This week was the week.  On Friday, after a busy day, I decided we would have meatloaf, so I went downstairs and brought up a jar.  It really did look weird.  When I popped open the car, it smelled fine, but then I couldn't get it out.  Although I had made it in a wide mouth jar, the meatloaf was wedged in and would not come out.  I eventually had to cut the meatloaf in half and sort of pry out half of it, breaking it up as I went.  It looked and sounded like dog food being forced out of a can.  Then, after I had plopped it on the baking sheet to put it in the oven, I tasted a little bit and commented that it tasted like dog food too.  Brandt was in the kitchen when I said all this, and although I was joking, when it came time to eat our dinner, Brandt would not have any meatloaf on his plate.  Not a slice, not a morsel, not the tiniest bit.  He screamed, "I don't want dog food for dinner!"  We removed the meatloaf, washed the plate, and reminded ourselves to watch what we say around the children.

While the heated up version was not bad and did not taste like dog food, the appearance was still a little off-putting.  And while it might keep us from starving or being attacked by zombies, I'm not sure how full it is going to keep Kent's love bucket.  I suppose I'll have to keep making fresh.