Hold onto your hats guys, here’s a recipe that was a winner! I know, can you believe it? I made Meat Loaf Sandwiches with Tomato Relish on Garlic Bread from February Martha Stewart Living (page 158).  I was a little unenthusiastic going in, I admit. Another three part recipe, I sighed to myself.

First you make the meatloaf. It’s a pretty basic recipe, except instead of bread crumbs, Martha has you cut up some chunks of bread and soak them in milk. For meat, she directs you to use a mix of beef, pork and buffalo. Yes, buffalo.  My dirty little secret – I just used beef and nothing else. The meatloaf was easy to make, no problems there.

Then you make a tomato relish. God lord, I thought. How silly this sounds. You broil tomatoes (I cut the recipe in half, so I only broiled one) then cook up a mix of scallion, honey, balsamic vinegar, oil, sugar, and water. Once the tomatoes are broiled you chop them and add them to the mix. You cook it a little longer then strain it and discard the liquid. I was left with a very tiny amount (if you make this recipe you need to make much, much more of this – double or triple it).

Then you made garlic bread, but Martha directs you to use rye (off I ran to the store for that).

Ok, once you’ve got all that made, you assemble it into a sandwich. You’re supposed to add some mache to it, but I forgot (it would have been good though, so do add it if you make this).

Wow. This was really good!! It was just the perfect combo of sweet, garlic, meat, and flavors. I loved it. If you’ve ever had Swedish meatballs with lingonberry jelly, it is sort of like that.

This one is a good thing for sure!