Meal: cheddar studded meatloaf patties, mashed potatoes
Cost: about $3.50 per person
Time: 45 minutes
Leftovers: 3 meat patties, lots of mashed potatoes
Local ingredients: beef, potatoes, cheese (Ohio), butter, milk, egg
Organic ingredients: tomato paste, flour, spices, tomato puree, Worchestshire sauce, garlic

This week’s one local summer meal was from Rachael Ray’s 365: No Repeats–A Year of Deliciously Different Dinners, which I picked up from the library in hopes of getting some new dinner ideas that wouldn’t take forever to make. I don’t understand why Rachel Ray gets looked down on so much by foodies - yea, she’s way too perky, but she’s encouraging people to cook and spreading the message that cooking real food, not eating take out, every night is doable.

Anyhow, these were big beef patties, a pound of ground beef dosed up with an egg, Worchestshire sauce, tomato puree, lots of garlic (5 cloves), some spices, and a quarter pound of sharp cheddar cheese. You form these up into patties (she says 4, which would have been huge; I got 7 out of the mixture) and fry in a couple of tablespoons of oil until they’re done, then use the drippings in the pan to make gravy, which went on top of mashed potatoes. I left the called for green pepper out of the meat patties, and the cream out of the mashed potatoes, and the butter out of the gravy (that much oil in the gravy, and then butter added to it? Oy), as there was a lot of fat in this meal already, and everything turned out fine. Also, this was supposed to be a southwest-themed meal, so the recipe called for finishing off the gravy with… lime juice and cilantro, something I just couldn’t bring myself to do to a good cream gravy. I’m sure this meal is great as the recipe is written, and it was fantastic the way I made it. We’ll be making these again.