Creole Meatloaves with Trinity Gravy and Mashed Sweet Potatoes

Krista Kooks is proud to bring you...

drum roll please...

Mrs. Courtney Mayfield!

This wonderful young lady is bringing you a new realm to Krista Kooks with pork and sweet potatoes, which is something you will NEVER see me cook. That's why I was so excited she made this recipe because I told her I wanted a well rounded blog! Her hubby loved this recipe, so, without further ado...

"After many complaints by my husband of the "same ol' stuff," I decided to try this "real" cooking thing - starting with Krista's blog and her Fake Bake Rigatoni post. After surprising success with it, I started watching Rachael Ray's talk show and have tried a few of her fab recipes as well. These are both recipes that I will definitely be keeping around and making again.

For the first recipe - Creole Meatloves with Trinitiy Gravy, I have to honestly say I didn't know there was even a such thing as ground pork - beef and turkey of course and then bison if you were a little out there, but pork??? Turns out it's actually already in the prepackaged section at Central Market, so maybe I'm just naive.

We really really liked this recipe. To quote my husband Will, "This is on the verge of being not just good, but great." It was a very easy recipe, but still a nice change. I don't eat traditional meatloaf either, so the absence of the ketchup taste was quite nice for me too.

I do think I'll make a few tweaks to the recipe in the future: add salt and pepper to the meatloaf mixture and cut down on the veggies in the "gravy" - probably to one onion, maybe one and a half, and leave out a little celery and bell pepper. As you will see, our gravy was more just wet chunks of veggies and I would have preferred it a little more saucy.Rachael Ray suggested Mashed Sweet Potatoes to accompany the meal and I thought they were a very nice compliment and actually tasted great with the gravy on them. And since I already had the buttermilk for those, I made up a quick batch of buttermilk cornbread too.

As someone looking for good, but not too pricey dinner ideas, I hope these help you the same way Krista's posts help me - I can't wait to try the Golden Onion Baked Chicken this weekend!"