Legend of Zelda Meatloaf

Happy Birthday to My Brother--We Were LINKed By Blood, and Now Meatloaf.

Back in 1989, I used to watch my big brother play The Legend of Zelda on our Nintendo. We watched the cartoon they made out of it, and still quote it in 2010...more frequently than we should admit. Now we're playing the original game together, but on the Wii. We have played Zelda on various gaming systems; we're currently on the latest Nintendo DS version, Spirit Tracks.

Some of my happiest childhood memories involve gaming with my bro. And even though we're now grown with families of our own, when we pick up our controllers (which are wireless--wow), we're kids again.

I have to admit, this may be my favorite meatloaf so far--maybe because I couldn't wait to surprise Elliot with it and thought of his reaction with each element I added to it. This was the first meatloaf I've given away as a gift (I was glad to have a week off from eating it, despite how tasty it is!).

I love you, Ell. Pretty soon our kids will be gaming together.

P.S.Check it out, I'm not the only one to have made Link out of food.

P.P.S. You don't like the meatloaf? Well excuuuuuuuuuse me, princess!

http://www.zeldalegends.net/: Great site for hardcore fans!

Meat: The New Dough

This one's for you, mom. Mom asked me to do the Olympic rings and torch.

Shaping the rings: I started by rolling my meat, piece by piece. It rolled just like dough--in fact, the five rings looked like doughnuts.

As I worked, I couldn't help but wonder if I was a meat-rolling pioneer. Other than shaping meatballs, this seemed to be unexplored territory. What would an Iron Chef do if he knew about the possibilities offered by ground meat? The nature of the competition would be changed. Forever.

It's not just a matter of taking a chunk of meat in your hands and swishing it back and forth with your palms to create a cylindrical shape. To create smooth, elongated rolled strips, place the meat on your board and gently place your palms on the ends and roll forward in a swift motion. Bring your hands back to starting position and repeat this process. You should feel the meat stretching as it rolls--as you would dough. Man, this is exciting stuff.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, I was talking about putting the rings together. My original plan was to interlock them using the raw meat, but that was surprisingly difficult. I eventually gave up and realized I could handle the meat better when it was cooked. Besides, I knew I'd be covering any mishaps with other food toppings.

When I thought about the colors, I wasn't into the idea of making purees. I decided to play with texture. For the flame of the torch I wanted two shades of orange, so I layered cheese with shaved cooked carrot (which gives off a richer orange hue than raw). I experimented with more textures for the rings: yellow melted cheese, red chopped peppers, lovely fresh green spinach, ye olde black bean paste that keeps popping up on my meatloaf...and purple cabbage. I like that this blog has me trying new foods--don't think I ever would have bought purple cabbage otherwise. It's good for my kids to see me modeling this, especially when I've always been a picky eater.

Steaming the spinach and cabbage very slightly allowed me to wrap the leaves onto the meat. The deeper colors were a plus as well.

I didn't think to look up the origins of the Olympics emblem until after I made the meatloaf. Turns out there are lots of rules on how you may or may not use the symbol. Well, after today, they're going to have to amend the rules to read "The interlocking version may be produced in any of the aforementioned colours, or in full colour. Or in meatloaf."

Meet Bob: Meatbob

Ohhh, who lived in an oven in apartment 1G?
Spongebob Squarepants!
Edible and scrumptious and moist was he
Spongebob Squarepants!
If dining on Spongebob be something you wish
Then get your meatloaf creation onto a dish!

Evil Dead

This was the first time I fooled around with meatloaf. It was 2007, and my friend Melanie came over to watch Evil Dead.

This lovely lady has:
-Pesto spaghetti hair
-Hard boiled eggs with olives as eyes
-Potato nose
- Pepper mouth
-Almond teeth
-Her blood is marinara sauce