#16 Nom-nom Paleo's "Super Porktastic Bacon-Topped Spinach & Mushroom Meatloaf" with Carrot-Turnip Puree

 Oh... my... gawd! This was, without a doubt, the BEST thing I've made all year! Last week I told you about Nom Nom Paleo's food blog and her amazing meatloaf recipe I couldn't wait to try. Well, it was worth the wait! Not to mention that after fretting over all the added fat from the bacon, and then using MyFitnessPal to figure out the calories and fat, I was more than thrilled that a 9x5 loaf cut into 8 pieces yields only 317 calories and 20g of fat! Not to mention the turnip/carrot puree was mighty tasty, if not a little baby-foodish.

So, do you wanna know how I made it? Huh, do ya? Well, the link above has the original recipe (with absolutely amazing photography to assist with your step-by-step... believe me, I'm aware that my Canon PowerShot SD630 was not made for food pornography.)
I did make a few tweaks to the original recipe: my favorite farmer did not have ground pork last weekend (insert overly dramatic sad violin here), but he has the best grass fed ground beef I've ever tasted, so I went with that. Also, I had forgotten the bacon and celery on my after-farmer's-market-grocery-store-run last weekend, and was disappointed when I made a quick run on my way home from work to find that the nearby HEB did not have organic celery, the number 1 culprit on the Dirty Dozen list. So, I instead opted for some Pacific Natural Foods condensed cream of celery soup in place of the 1/4c of cream/milk. Delicious. Yum!

Edited Recipe
1 lb fresh chopped, cooked down, and drained spinach
1 1/4 lb ground beef
1/4 c flour (or a bit more, if you're like me and too impatient to let spinach cool before wringing it out & burning yourself)
2 small garlic cloves, minced
1 tsp salt + more to taste
1 1/2 tsp black pepper + more to taste
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/4 cup condensed cream of celery
1/2 cup chopped fresh parsley
1 Tbsp butter
1/2 cup finely chopped yellow onion
1/2 lb finely chopped portabella mushrooms
2 large eggs
5 slices of bacon

• Preheat oven to 350.
• Heat butter and saute onions and mushrooms with salt and pepper.
• Blend cream of celery and parsley until pureed.
• Add all of this to a medium bowl (except for bacon) & mix by hand.
• Transfer to 9x5 loaf pan.
• Bake for 70-75min (I had to leave it a bit longer, some of the meat was still pink.)
• Set oven to broil and broil for 3 min or until bacon is crispy.
• Pour off grease and let sit for 10-20min.
• Serve with marinara or tomato sauce on top.