Easter Meatloaf

I like to cook meatloaf in small containers because doing it in one large pan takes absolutely forever to bake. Since I had been playing around with Easter decorations anyway, I grabbed pastel ramekins, cooked my mini-meatloafs in them, and proceeded to experiment with different dish, flatware, table linen configurations. Do you have a favorite? The ingredients and recipe for the meatloafs are at the bottom.

Ingredients:

• Ground beef
• Ground pork (optional — you can do it completely with ground beef)
• Bread crumbs (I used crumbs from my low carb croutons)
• Italian seasoning
• Green or red bell pepper (or both)
• Onion
• Worcestershire sauce
• Eggs
• Green onion
• Shredded cheeses or ketchup for garnish

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Place the meat into a large bowl. Add in your bread crumbs and a good amount of Italian seasoning.

Chop your peppers up and finely chop your onion. Add to the bowl. (Looking at this now, I’m wondering what I was thinking. Trust me, you don’t want this much pepper and onion.)

Shake in a generous amount of Worcestershire sauce. If you like it as much as I do, that’s a lot! Add your eggs. (For 2-3 pounds of meat, I use a couple of eggs.)

Mince some green onion. You can add some to the meatloaf, but reserve a bunch for garnish, too. Mix well. (Yes, of course I have my gloves on — but don’t they have cute leopard ruffles?)

Finish mixing all ingredients together. Use a big scoop and scoop the mixture into your ramekins, then start to pat down.

Once you have loaded all the ramekins, check to ensure you have substantially equal amounts in each one, then make a thumbprint in the middle of each so you don’t get domes on your meatloaf. Pop them into the oven.

You will need to bake them somewhere between 20 and 40 minutes, depending upon the size of the containers. Halfway through the cooking process, blot the grease out of the thumbprint area with paper towels. 5 or 10 minutes before you think they will be done, sprinkle on your shredded cheese and green onions, or squirt on some ketchup. I like to do a variety. Some people have strong opinions about what they like.