Mer and Meatloaf

My good friend Meredith came over today to keep me company (and ultimately help maintain my sanity) while I experimented with recipes for my upcoming HCHW webisodes.   The goal of the day was to sneak veggies into every food possible to help mom's and dad's get their potentially uninterested children to eat veggies!  

SO, in 3 hours I made: Carrot Crackers (need tweaking), Quinoa and Veggie Meatloaf, Secret Spaghetti Sauce (cause it has so many veggies!!) and finally Wild Smoothies (cause I added spinach!).  Whew!  Oh, and I had an extra ripe plantain (maduros) hanging around so I baked it in the oven for an extra treat... yeah, I need to take a load off.  

The verdict?  Well, all I know is Mer went home stuffed and I don't think either one of us will be needing dinner tonight.  According to my taste-tester aficionado, thumbs up on the meatloaf and spaghetti sauce, maybe a touch less spinach in the smoothie (I went a little slap happy with the spinach!), and crackers had great flavor but work on the texture.  Oh, and Mer recommends dipping the crackers in the spaghetti sauce :)

I will work on all of these to make them even better, the first try is always the toughest, especially when you cook 5 NEW recipes in 3 hours!  Sometimes you feel like a nut... this time I do, but I will keep trying until those crackers come out perfect.  No pictures of the food for now, I want to keep you guessing until I achieved perfection... or close enough to it!  This picture is of the two of us making collaborative artwork, a portrait of Mer's first house many moons ago when we were in graduate school together.

Thanks for the help!!