Making Mom's Meatloaf

I was late to the kitchen.

Like 10 years late. When I got married at 28, I didn't bring much to the literal table. At one of my bridal showers, I received beautiful recipe cards filled with instructions for delicious creations steeped in family tradition. I was touched by the thoughtful gift - and terrified of my absolute lack of cooking experience. (Choosing cookware for the registry generated similar feelings of panic). My husband cheerfully volunteered to do most of the cooking and reassured me that whatever I did make would be great. (I don't think he expected tears when he asked what we were having for dinner as he left for work the Monday after we were married. My response? "We don't eat together on Mondays." "Well, honey we do now. We're married..."). Our first married dinner was one for the scrapbook: macaroni and cheese with cut up ham. Such a gourmet beginning!

As time passed, my culinary craft evolved and I found myself enjoying time in the kitchen. My husband and I rotate dinner duty by coaching season and school schedule and turn to our good friend the crockpot whenever possible. We've dug into that wedding recipe file, flipped through Kraft Food and Family magazines, earmarked Taste of Home selections and made our own discoveries and experiments along the way. I love to bake (anything that doesn't require an artistic final touch like icing) and find comfort in the smells that linger in our home long after the oven light goes off. It's been especially fun lately to put a little 5-month old helper in her bumpo seat to watch the "magic" unfold.

Though I am a late-to-the-game-less-than-confident-cook, I do have one crowning domestic achievement: my meatloaf. My mom's meatloaf to be precise.

My husband loves it. Meatloaf night is like a mini-holiday in our household. The moment that notation goes up on the refrigerator, I have a grown man doing a little dance around the kitchen island. For someone who was a bit reluctant to try that meal early in our marriage, he is now a gleeful eater of said meatloaf. (It makes my heart smile a little to hear him brag about it as he digs into leftovers the next day at lunch. It's like a little confirmation that I can cook something right. Do I get a star on the wife chart for that?)

Tonight is meatloaf night. As I stirred ingredients in my favorite white mixing bowl (even having a favorite feels like an achievement!), explaining to my cooing helper in the pink seat just what Mommy was throwing in, I felt like I was home. It has been a less than productive day, complicated by a non-napper who decided today to throw her usual schedule out the window. I've felt alternately harried and inadequate and close to tears for most of the day but putting together my mom's recipe put me back in her kitchen. I loved that I could walk through my kitchen, opening pantry and refrigerator doors, selecting ingredients without having to consult Mom's neatly written recipe. I know it by heart - literally and metaphorically. A dash of this, a splash of that, a hey-let's-try-that-today and we have meatloaf. The creative inexactness makes me feel like a cook - and makes the inexactness of the day a bit more bearable.

Tonight, as it bakes for over an hour in our fifty-five-year-old oven, it will smell like home. I'll walk in from practice and momentarily feel like that high school senior walking in the door from basketball practice to sit down to eat with my family of five at our carefully set table. As I scrub out the pan and watch my husband paint our daughter's face with her dinner spoon (she is not the most focused of eaters), I'll feel like my mom. And the connection of home - hers and mine - will be complete.

Maybe I'll do a little dance around the kitchen island now that my daughter is finally napping. After all, it's Meatloaf Night. And Mom cooked.