Doing meatloaf tonight--Hmmmmm...

So I've got meatloaf in the oven. I'm just so sick of chicken and salmon that I wanted meat, but nothing as heavy as a real steak. Now last night we had meat, but it was in the form of sausage, red and green peppers, tomatoes and onions cooked in garlic with a little olive oil. Lots of salt and pepper--sea salt and cracked black pepper--and man, that was good. I had it plain. Guests had it over rice. It came with stuffed zucchini, which was just about perfect and way better than my mother ever made it--though I know I'm going to hell for saying that. Lots of good parmesan cheese, sauteed scallions, tomatoes, garlic, a touch of ginger root, a bit of breadcrumbs with some fresh Peruvian oregano and just a hint of butter as I was cooking it all to stuff the slightly-cooked zucchini. Cooked them whole for about 4 minutes in water that was just under boiling, just to make them soft enough that when I cut them in half-lengthwise, cleaned out the seeds and stuffed them, they'd take to baking-to-finish in the oven quickly, so I didn't have to overcook the stuffing.
    Somehow, after a lot of lawn mowing today--I'm so out of shape I was taking breaks every 12 minutes!--I decided meatloaf without rice or potato or any starch--just a salad and spinach quickly sauteed with garlic and a touch of olive oil and cracked black pepper--was the perfect meal.
    Basic recipe: 1.5 lbs of ground pork. 3 lbs of good chuck meat. Mix.
    Add 3 oz ketchup--Heinz--two eggs, a couple of ounces of good breadcrumbs with Peruvian oregano, salt and pepper--you know the drill.
    While you're mixing that, put two heads of fresh minced garlic steeped in olive oil in a pan, add a huge sweet red onion, diced, two stalks of organic celery, minced, two organic tomatoes, diced finely. Cook till everything is soft and every flavor and color is married to the others. Add to the meat mix.
    Work the meat with your hands when the cooked material is cool enough to do it, put it in two baking dishes--one bread pan, one medium casserole dish--and top with slices of very thin pork belly, pre-smoked and ready to eat, and a bit of ketchup or bbq sauce. Not too much. It makes it's own juice and you can make gravy out of that if you like.
    So that's in the oven. The kids were over all day, Italo and I replaced the rope on their swing in the front yard (so I don't have to worry about them falling when it breaks!!!!!) and Italo jury-rigged my lawnmower to work.
     I worked my butt off yesterday, doing interviews for my story due on Tuesday, for which Madeleina took the photos, delivered medicine to a sick friend--Una de Gato and Sacha Jergon, along with CBD--to ameliorate his cancer, nearly finishing up a big pot of San Pedro medicine that I'll actually finish tomorrow morning, and feeding and entertaining guests.
    And then tomorrow I get the results of my chest X-Rays, which I hope don't tell me anything really bad. I know I've been smoking 2 packs a day for 50 years, so whatever it is, I invited it, but at the same time, I'd like to think I'm not one of the people going to get cancer. Pretty arrogant I guess, but that's how I justified smoking--which I love--all these years.
     Meatloaf is starting to smell good. I mean very good. If you're in the neighborhood, I've got a lot more than I can use, so come on by. We love company, and we're not even in misery!