Home From Townsend For Cindy’s Special Birthday Meal For Us

I’d mentioned in an earlier post that Bev, Pat and I were all celebrating BD’s with our trip to Townsend and Cindy's friend, Ernie, also had a Sep BD so Cindy wanted to make a special meal for all of us when we got home from our short trip.

She discovered a two pound package of elk that my WV cousin had given us (his son is the hunter) that I had forgotten was in the freezer and she turned it into meatloaf using a recipe from Cast Iron Cooking.

Elk Meatloaf with Crispy Bacon

Ingredients:

▢16-ounce package of bacon

▢2 cloves garlic minced

▢2 pounds ground Elk meat

▢½ cup ketchup

▢½ tbsp Worcestershire sauce

▢½ tsp Dijon mustard my favorite is Dijon with white wine

▢½ cup panko breadcrumbs

▢2 medium size eggs

▢½ tsp sea salt

▢½ tsp ground black pepper

▢¼ teaspoon onion powder

For the Glaze Topping

▢¼ cup barbeque sauce

▢¼ cup ketchup

▢⅛ cup brown sugar

▢½ tablespoon apple cider vinegar

Instructions:

 Preheat your oven to 350°F

Chop up bacon finely, then cook it on medium heat in a large cast iron skillet. Add the garlic for the last 30 seconds or so. Place the bacon on a paper towel lined plate and drain the grease out of the skillet.

Add all the remaining ingredients, (not the toppings) to a large bowl or crock and Loosely mix.

Now that our bacon has had a chance to cool, gently mix it in with the rest of the meatloaf ingredients.

Shape your loaf and place it in the same skillet you cooked the bacon in earlier. Just make sure it has cooled down to the touch.

Bake in your preheated oven for 55-66 minutes on the center rack. While its baking, combine the topping ingredients and brush them on for the last 30 minutes of cooking.

Cook the meatloaf until it reaches an internal temperature of 160°F. Note that if the glaze on top of the meatloaf starts to brown, you can loosely cover it with aluminum foil.

Carefully remove the meatloaf from the oven with mitts and let it rest for 10 minutes before slicing and serving for the best results.

The rest of the menu was twice baked sweet potatoes using a recipe from A Recipes.

and, fresh corn on the cob. 

And pineapple pie for dessert using the recipe from Mexico In My Kitchen.

This is my plate but I past on the corn so I would have more stomach room for meatloaf and a little sliver of pie.

The Verdict:

The only item on this menu that I had ever eaten was the boiled corn but I thought the other three items were all delicious.  While I could not say for sure that it was elk meatloaf, I could tell that it tasted different than a normal beef version.  The potatoes were sweet and reminded me of sweet potato pie.  I really liked that the pie was much less sweet then I expected and I would like to have eaten a big wedge of it so I ate two slivers for breakfast the next morning.  Thanks Cindy for a wonderful treat.

Photos can be slightly enlarged by clicking on them and the blue words are links.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by Almost Heaven South.

Larry

9/15/26 event date