Wednesday 11 April 2012

It must be summer - I'm making meatloaf

Daisy in one of her favourite spots
It must be nearly summer, because I have been making meatloaf again. Not just any meat loaf – probably the best meatloaf ever, and my failsafe camping standby. I haven’t been camping yet, I hasten to add, but the Husband took Blue and Pink away for a night to check out Daisy after her long winter indoors. It froze, but they had fun.

 I had intended to send them on their merry way with one of these in Daisy’s fridge, but given the temperature, fish and chips was probably a better option, and also I ran out of time. However, I had the necessary, so I made the meatloaves the next day anyway and they are now nestled in the freezer waiting for the next trip.

I got the recipe from an old Good Food mag (August 2010 to be precise) and it’s on their website: Cold meatloaf with squashed tomato and red pepper salsa . It totally encapsulates my approach to camping: It’s dead easy. It can be made in advance and in bulk and left in the freezer until needed. I usually make 2 at a time, and line my loaf tins with foil before filling them with the mixture, leaving enough spare so that it’s easy to remove the cooked loaves from the tins and wrap them up for easy freezing once they’ve cooled down. The salsa cooks at the same time as the loaves and is truly delicious – you can add more chilli or remove it depending on the mouths you are catering for and it tastes fabulous whatever.

I usually make an enormous potato salad and may be another salad to take and we invariably end up eating this first time round on Friday night somewhere down the A303 heading for Dorset or beyond. Occasionally we’ve made it to the weekend’s location for a reasonable time, in which case it’s simply a matter of serving up – nothing more required (maybe a cup of tea if it’s chilly, but I usually find my first van G&T of the weekend does the trick – although if we’re still en route, it’s strictly a cuppa tea).

 There’s always enough left over for lunch on Saturday so provided there are plenty of rolls knocking around, there’s no need to do any more, and the salsa will last for the Saturday evening BBQ, as generally will the salads which I usually take in plastic boxes (no scurvy for us). Makes life very easy.

I often find that these ‘ideal for camping’ or ‘ideal for picnics’ recipes are never quite as ‘ideal’ as they suggest – the same issue of GF had some ploughman’s rolls which I really didn’t rate (interestingly, I couldn’t find them on the website), but this meatloaf is really the business.

I’m always on the look-out for good camping fodder so any suggestions, leave me a comment – we’ve got plenty of trips planned this summer so I’ll be waiting to try them all out!

11 comments:

  1. Ok this recipe looks really good and as we increasingly camping with the children, any other recipes you would like to share would be fab..... please! Will have a think about our food successes too! Cxx

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  2. don't worry, I'll be doing lots of van cooking as the summer gets going. Just got a little matter of my 40th birthday party to get over first... I can recommend the Camper van cook book for good travelling cakes (although some of the 'proper' recipes seem little complicated for van cooking, but the lamb burgers are good).

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  3. Meatloaf looks great-like a massive faggot, but better!
    Re: Cooking with limited facilities-have you tried a Remoska?-I have 3 and they are quite brilliant (although perhaps a bit hot for cakes).

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    1. Had to google 'remoska' as had never heard of it, but looks quite impressive. Do you really have 3? I ended up on the Lakeland website (always a dangerous place for me to be, sad but true) and started wondering whether there would be room for one in the van, because we do occasionally spalsh out on electric hook up. But then I realised that this would limit the opportunities for us to burn things on an open fire of a saturday night...

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  4. looks such fun (sound like Miranda!) Our camping food is pretty basic, pasta and pesto pretty much all weekend! x

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    1. we do pasta a lot too, especially if we're out for more than 2 nights. I have an emergency stash of it, along with baked beans, hot chocolate, gin and 2 jilly cooper novels. The essentials.

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  5. We're vegetarian but this reminded me of a Delia Smith non-meat meatloaf I used to make - going to have to go and look it up now - your posts always make me hungry!!

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    1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    2. Hi ATO Mum - I'd be really interested to have a copy of the Delia recipe if you find it - we're not veggie (obviously) but in my efforts to reduce our meat consumption, a non-meat meatloaf would be an excellent addition to my veggie repertoire

      (I removed the last reply because I spelled consumption wrong...)

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  6. Lovely to see Daisy!! Very exciting to have her on the road again. Think it may be a while before Betty is out and about...she isn't starting at the moment. My camping fare is often pretty dull, so will give meatloaf a go x

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    1. poor Betty. What is she? The meatloaf is a good one - the kids love it and it's dead easy too.

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