Meatloaf, y'all!

The basis for this meatloaf recipe is from Self Magazine, but I find it a little labor-intensive (and fancypants ingredients heavy, I mean, saute the vegetables in white wine?  OK, maybe if I'm making meatloaf for Wills and Kate.) so I subtracted a bunch of stuff/steps.  The nice thing about cooking is that you can generally substitute most ingredients out and even skip steps, unlike baking which is like chemistry--too much baking soda and your cake may explode like a middle-school science project volcano.

Daisy's White Trash Meatloaf (Now with fewer steps!)

Half an onion (red, white, yellow, whatever you like)
Half a bell pepper (I use green because there's a lot of red ingredients in this)
5-6 baby carrots (or probably 2 adult carrots)
1 lb of ground meat (as lean as possible so it's not all greasy)
1 jar of spaghetti sauce
2 eggs
Bread crumbs--about a cup though if you're trying to stretch this for more leftovers, you could add more
Cooking oil spray

Preheat oven to 375.  Mince onion, pepper, carrots, and garlic and throw in a mixing bowl.  Add 1 lb of ground meat (I use turkey because it's cheaper than lean ground beef and probably better for us), half a jar of spaghetti sauce,  2 eggs, and about a cup of bread crumbs (if you don't have any crush up some crackers--I did it with goldfish crackers once, the meatloaf was a weird orange color but other than that totally fine).  Meatloaf recipes say to mix it with your hands but I think that's gross so I just mix it up with a wooden spoon, and then dump it in an 8x8 square glass pan that I've sprayed with cooking spray.  Spread it around so the top is fairly flat, and then put some more spaghetti sauce on top.  Bake for an hour, remove from oven and let stand for 5 minutes.

In this recipe the veggies will still be fairly crunchy.  If this bothers you, you could add a little water and microwave them for a minute or two, or you could saute them in white wine or in a tiny little bit of olive oil.  Personally, I like the crunch.  We salt and pepper after cooking but if you want to put some in before go for it.  You could sub out the spaghetti sauce for BBQ sauce (I've done it before, it was good but I like this better) or if you're feeling decadent, put some bacon on top before cooking.

We served this with spinach sauteed in olive oil.  Not gonna lie, it was pretty good.