Meatloaf, the followup

Yes, we did it. Our first meatloaf. I posted the Food & Wine recipe earlier, so I'm not going to repeat all of that. The meatloaf itself was very easy to make...and we liked that you cook the onions, carrots and celery beforehand so they are a subtle taste. And the cubed Monteray Jack was a great addition...though next go around, we will shred the cheese instead of cubing it to get the flavor more evenly spread through the loaf.

The creamy onion gravy was great and complimented the meatloaf really, really well. But it took a long time to make and we're not sure it's worth the effort.

Finally, the mashed potatoes...I got a Pressure Cooker from Williams-Sonoma for my birthday after reading an article about them and it boasting that you can make mashed potatoes in 7 minutes. Could this be true?!? We broke in the new appliance trying out this theory on some Yukon Golds. What they didn't tell me in the article was that there is a warm up period of a few minutes while the pressure builds in the cooker before the actual cooking starts. But still, gorgeous, perfectly cooked mashed potatoes in less than ten minutes - what a God-send. We'll be eating a lot more potatoes, baby!!

All said and done, a really great, pretty easy meal with leftovers. We're happy to try this recipe again!