Easy Cooking: Meatless Meatloaf

This is a recipe for you hard-core vegetarians, the type, who like myself, want to eat something that tastes like meat every now and then. I say hard-core also because those who like to dabble in vegetarianism or who are just starting to eliminate meat from their diet might not think this sort-of-meatloaf satisfies their meat-craving desires.

While the texture is different from what you call meatloaf, remember that each one of the real thing differs from the next. The meatloaf I made for many years, until I eliminated all meats, used ground chuck (when ground beef came from real cuts of meat and not a combination of who knows what). My mother used ground pork along with regular ground beef and my grandmother added sausage to hers. To season my meatloaf and bind it together, I used eggs, oats, chili sauce, onion, and other good stuff from my pantry and refrigerator. One time it was chopped bell pepper, another time capers, maybe leftover spaghetti sauce instead of chili sauce, and so forth.

This recipe, much different from my familiar, conventional meatloaf, is one I adapted from a Kellogg's version created for and by Seventh-Day Adventists. (John Harvey Kellogg was Adventist.) Amazingly, Special K cereal, chopped nuts, cottage cheese, eggs, and seasonings mix together to make a respectable facsimile of the old-fashioned favorite. There is one special product you should have for this and that is the chicken seasoning powder. I purchase it at ABC (Adventist Book Center). You don't have to be an Adventist to shop there. I'm not. If you don't have such a store near you, look for the seasoning in a natural food store or co-op. If you can't find any, onion soup mix will work.

By the way, the ABC stores stock some great ersatz meat products. My favorite is their dinner roast. And I'll be serving their smoked turkey roll next week for Thanksgiving along with gravy made from a mix they sell. Beyond that, I'll make stuffing as I always have (using water for the chicken broth), cook up fresh cranberries for sauce, mash potatoes, and bake pumpkin pies. It will be vegetarian -- not vegan -- and delicious, I assure you.

But for now, here's my meatless meatloaf recipe.

1 onion, chopped

3 tablespoons vegetable oil

5 eggs

5 cups Special K cereal

1 cup chopped walnuts

1 pint lowfat cottage cheese

3 tablespoons powdered fake chicken seasoning (I use McKay brand)

1/4 cup ketchup or chili sauce

Salt and pepper

Few drops Tabasco sauce

Saute onion in oil. Beat eggs lightly in large mixing bowl. Using a large wooden spoon, stir in the cereal, walnuts, cottage cheese, chicken seasoning, onion, ketchup, salt, pepper and Tabasco. Mix well.

Spoon out mixture into 9x5-inch loaf pan that has been sprayed with Pam. Press mixture into pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour and 15 minutes. Remove from oven and place pan on cookie rack to cool for about 20 minutes. Turn meatloaf out to slice or slice it in pan. Makes about a dozen slices.

Note: If you don't have Special K, corn flakes make a good substitute.

Simple Gifts

'Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free,
'Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be.

-- Simple Gifts (1848)

The ways we Americans can honor and support our troops are nearly beyond counting. Care packages, letters, military family support, gift certificates, books, DVDs, groceries, cell phones, clothes, rehabilitation programs, blood, scholarships, vocational training, videoconferencing facilities -- there are literally hundreds of ways to volunteer time and donate money, goods, and services to the military and their families.

The Military.com Web site provides a huge list of organizations that need everyone's help. You'd be surprised just how easy it is to give something -- even if you're low on cash or time.

Do you have an old cell phone you don't use anymore? There's an organization called Cell Phones for Soldiers that needs used cell phones. CPS pays for calling cards for the troops -- a great idea (www.cellphonesforsoldiers.com).

You can give blood at the American Red Cross Armed Forces (www.redcross.org/) or the Armed Services Blood Program (www.militaryblood.dod.mil/).

Give something. It's easy -- and it helps. Every little bit helps the people who spend months away from their families and friends stateside.

See www.military.com/benefits/resources/support-our-troops for an extensive list of volunteer organizations.

Old Hollywood and the Detection Tale

Which classic-age tales of detection would I have wanted filmed in the studio era?

1. The Four Tragedies of Memworth (Lord Ernest Hamilton). Chinamen and a multiple murder make for a rousing and convincing tale.

2. Murder Must Advertise (Sayers). The problem here would have been, How to film the migraine in Chapter 4, the funniest and most palpable migraine description in all literature?

3. An Oxford Tragedy (John Cecil Masterman). A German law professor solves the crime: a don shot dead.

4. Case of the Seven Whistlers (George Bellairs).

5. The Congo Venus (John Canaday). Women missionaries and a cover-up in an excellent story.

6. The Body in the Silo (aka Settled Out of Court) (Ronald Knox). The monkey could have been as big a star as Lassie.

7. The Nursing-Home Murder (Ngaio Marsh and Dr. Jellett). With the possible exception of Death in a White Tie, the best Marsh; the "nursing-home" is actually a hospital operating room.

Centralization in Los Angeles: A Taxing Lunacy

Los Angeles is raising its taxes -- again. This time, it's to "pay for" various infrastructure projects (scheduled for completion in 30 years) and to "create jobs." Create jobs? Liberals -- whom I will henceforth refer to by their correct name, statists -- will nickel and dime us all into soup lines, while forcing their collectivist philosophy onto us by creating more and more government agencies until the entire civilization closely approximates the experience of an afternoon at the DMV.

I say let all of us keep most of our money. Let the private sector create jobs. Let it create innovation. Let it create newer, safer, and more efficient technologies. And most of all, let it pay for its activities out of its own profits.

Want to see something scary? Follow this link:
http://www.usa.gov/Agencies/Federal/All_Agencies/index.shtml

I don't need an Agricultural Marketing Service -- who does?!

Look at what we're all paying for, decade after decade. There are hundreds of these nincompoop, do-nothing government bureaus. Statists want more and more of them. I look at this list and I scream inwardly, over and over. It's a nightmare that never ends, an eternal anxiety attack.

Office of Government Ethics?! http://www.usoge.gov

When the statists call their immoral and coercive actions "ethics," it is even more sophisticated satire than anything you can read in Swift, Pope, or Voltaire.

Finally, We're Talking About Death

No longer do funeral homes have a monopoly on selling caskets. Walmart now offers the highly decorated coffins in its stores. While you're browsing for books, bedding and beans you can cruise down a nearby aisle and pick out a casket which you or your loved one -- at some time in the future -- will lie in forever.

Being that Walmart is selling them (urns too) -- Costco also sells caskets on its website -- low prices mean you should have your choice of velour instead of velvet, polyester instead of silk, plastic instead of brass. Why shouldn't you be able to get a bargain in caskets and urns like you do in pills and pizza?

It may take awhile until people are totally comfortable talking about caskets, but it will happen. And none too soon. For far too long, like forever, people have shied away from discussing death, allowing directors of funeral homes to keep everything pretty much a secret. And they, in turn, have relied on grief to bring families around to paying exorbitant fees for everything from the plot to flowers to caskets. We can't choose anything about our birth, but we can choose a few things about our death. And seeing our final resting containers in familiar stores, at reasonable prices, should help make the talk of death less scary.

Tuesday: A Day In Infamy

Upstate New York's election Tuesday, Nov. 3, is a very important one. I am predicting that the Democrats had best reconsider their strategy if the conservative candidate wins that seat in the House.

The Republican has withdrawn from the race, endorsing the Democratic candidate this weekend. The reason for such a strange endorsement is no doubt because ultra-right-wing conservatives like Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann have campaigned or endorsed the conservative over the Republican, who they consider to be too liberal. If your kids read Harry Potter, you're too liberal for that bunch.

My real prediction comes from a belief that if the conservative beats the Democrat, it will send a signal to Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and other hell-bent-for-leather conservatives that all Democrats are vulnerable and all they will need to do is send out armies of like thinkers and the elections will be won by their ilk. I think they're right.

Unless Obama abandons his idiotic plans to send more troops to Afghanistan, brings home a brigade a month from Iraq (his campaign promise), overturns Don't Ask, Don't Tell (a campaign promise), actually does anything he promised -- all before the elections a year from now -- the Democrats will lose their majorities in both the House and Senate.

This is serious stuff, liberals and progressives. Nothing can be taken for granted. And remember that the other side hates more than we do, an emotion that tends to make them stronger and more determined to win. Get off your lazy cappuccino drinking, sushi eating, hybrid driving butts and start now to counter what's only beginning on Tuesday. Or 2012 will be a cakewalk for the conservatives -- but maybe not the Republicans -- and Obama will be a one-term president.

Those are my predictions.

One more thing: What good is it to have a majority in the House and Senate when our so-called representatives act like a bunch of school children who are constantly mooning for the cameras? What a bunch of idiots. While I detested George W. Bush when he was president, at least he made up his mind and told the Congress to get him what he wanted. This bunch, from the president on down, look like wimps who can't decide how far to go on anything because they're so afraid of offending their big contributors. Where is the change?