This adventure was sponsored by Skratch Labs

With Thanksgiving on the horizon, I am trying to decide what’s going to be on the menu. I’m away from home a lot during the racing season, so the holidays are a welcomed excuse to explore the kitchen! Most days I stick to making the southern soul food dishes I grew up eating. Cooking new things puts me a little outside of my comfort zone, but that's also the fun of it! I tried out a recipe from the Feedzone Table Cookbook, the Sweet Potato, Pecan & Mushroom “Meatloaf”, to see if I can pull it off. I haven’t eaten meat since June. One day, I got a call from my husband, that he’d decided to try and remove meat from his diet with the exception of bacon. I told him I was into that. I’d gone long involuntary stints in college without eating meat, mostly because meat was expensive and therefore not in my budget. This was new, I’d never done it on purpose, and with bacon on my side, this sounded like a breeze. Cut to a week later when he informed me he’d fed our dog Emoji all of the bacon, and now it was off limits. It’s important to note, William ( my husband) never insisted that I participate in this diet with him, he actually keeps reminding me that I can stop whenever I want.

A mighty fine cubing job if I do say so myself!

Since then, we’ve settled on no meat, but fish is okay. So I guess that makes us pescatarians. I enjoyed that one week of being a baconarian way more, but to be quite honest I’ve had a much easier time digesting food since we’ve taken this leap, so I’m not mad about it.

All that being said. I love meat, I love chicken, and beef, and pork, and ox, not super into venison and rabbit destroys my insides. Meat is delicious and flavorful and wonderful and I have been doing my best to make up for it’s absence. That means trying new recipes and getting creative.

Now that you’ve got the backstory, let’s get into this Sweet Potato, Pecan & Mushroom “Meatloaf” from the Feedzone Table Cookbook by Biju Thomas & Allen Lim. I bought the cookbook about a year ago because I’m always looking for fun ways to eat healthier. The reality of the situation is that I am horrible at following recipes. I guesstimate measurements A LOT, and I rarely have all the appropriate tools and ingredients.

This time, I had most of the tools, and all of the ingredients, although guesstimations did occur! The recipe calls for gluten free bread and flour with the option to use regular bread and/or regular flour. I had potato bread, and self-rising flour, so that’s what I used.

The recipe also called for the use of a food processor. I don’t own one, I don’t even own a microwave, I have a thing against having too many appliances in my kitchen. So for this adventure, I improvised using the nutri bullet I received as a wedding present to make smoothies. It got the job done!

It’s pretty neat when non meat things take on meat-like textures!

The process was fairly easy. The most involved part was peeling and cubing the sweet potatoes. I also had to cube the bread, and cut down the mushrooms to fit into the nutri bullet. I really appreciate the simplicity of this recipe. Before this, the only recipes I’d attempted from Allen Lim or Skratch Labs were some rice cakes, and the Skratch Labs cookie mix (which is super tasty btw).

This part seemed just like my grandmas recipe.

I chose this recipe because it involves sweet potatoes. I LOVE sweet potatoes, I also love meatloaf. My grandma gave me a really simple meatloaf recipe that I wrote on a post-it and kept on my fridge for nearly a decade. Now I remember the recipe by heart, but I can’t it make it for myself because I’m not eating meat.

Threw in a tasty side salad for a complete lunch!

The prep took around twenty minutes, and the cooking time was one hour. Mine isn’t nearly as pretty as the one in the cookbook, but I’m impressed with how well it came out! I think next time, I’ll probably use less sweet potato (I went overboard on my guesstimation), and come up with a fun sauce like my grandma’s meatloaf recipe. Challenge complete, I made a “meatloaf” y’all! What’s on your Thanksgiving menu?!

Feed Zone Table Sweet Potato, Pecan & Mushroom “Meatloaf”