Meatless Meatloaf

San Jose, California, 1971:


Tom was going to school and money was very tight. Our kitchen table was a large cardboard box covered with a tablecloth. For bookshelves we stacked bricks with planks of wood in between. Our furniture was hand-me-downs. We scrimped everywhere we could, even with our meals.


One memorable day, I had a quarter of a pound of ground beef in the fridge and leftover corn, beans, and rice. I decided to make good use of the leftovers by making a meatloaf! I combined all the ingredients in a mixing bowl, squished it with my fingers, then packed it into a loaf pan. I was so proud of my creation. It had ALL the food groups AND was economical.

After our dinner baked in the oven, and I went to get the meatloaf out of the pan, my bubble burst. Since it had more vegetables and rice than meat, nothing really held it together. It was a big crumbly mess on our plate. It was a disaster. There just was not enough meat in my meatloaf.

I learned from that meatloaf to question if my life is mostly filler with little meat. Do I have more meat-like qualities like dedication, charity, persistence, love, kindness, and less of the fillers like television, computer games, and other time wasters. May we work on adding more meat to our meatloaf lives.