When a vegan makes a meatloaf

My first night in Florida last week, when I sat on the beach, drinking a beer, just enjoying the view. Photo by Kristen Hartke.

For those of you who so kindly read and commented on my last missive, titled “Is cooking always an act of love?”, a little update on what’s happened since I took myself off to Florida to check up on visit my elderly parents, who got me a little worried after they stopped answering the phone for nearly three months and only haphazardly replied to emails.

As I wrote here on Substack then, exactly two weeks ago, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. They’d told me not to come, that they weren’t up to a visit, but I decided to go anyway. I was prepared to spend the week taking walks on the beach and hanging out at my Airbnb. I told myself that it would be okay if they just consented to a five-minute hug-and-how-are-you. I mentally berated myself for imposing my will upon them, cooking for them when they didn’t ask me to but because it made me feel good, and generally being an imperfect daughter.

I arrived on a Monday in the late afternoon (my flight came in early!) and decided to walk by their condo building. They usually keep the front door open, with just the storm door closed, during the day, so I decided that if front door was open, I’d drop in — even though I had said, via email, that I’d plan on stopping by late Tuesday morning.

When I got to their building, the front door was closed — and that worried me. I guess I could have knocked on the door anyway, but I felt strangely unnerved by the closed door, taking it for some kind of metaphor or warning, so I walked back to the Airbnb, made myself dinner, and tried to distract myself by watching a really silly show on the Hallmark Channel.

On Tuesday morning, I took a long walk on the beach and then headed over toward their condo. As I was walking, my dad suddenly called me on FaceTime: “Are you here yet? Are you coming over?”

And, in a flash, all was well.

They were very happy to see me, as I was to see them. I told them that I’d walked over the previous night and had been surprised to find the front door closed; my dad said that maybe my mom had closed it for some reason, he wasn’t sure. I spent the day with them, picking up lunch from a Lebanese restaurant we all like, and then leaving just before sunset to walk back to my little place and make myself dinner again. My mother asked if I’d stick around for dinner the next day and I said I’d do whatever they wanted and was there to follow their lead.

I spent the next three days hanging out at their apartment, helping my mom with stuff on her computer, talking about anything she felt like, and making sure my dad rested when his blood pressure got a little high. I chatted with their friend, who comes over each afternoon to WFH on his laptop at their place while my dad gets a break from caregiving and my mom gets some company. He said that my parents were the most animated he’d seen them in months, and that meant a lot to me. I told them we should just plan that I’d come down every three months, and they seemed amenable to that. I breathed a sigh of relief.

From the first day that I spent with them, my dad kept talking about how much he missed my mom’s cooking. He’s never enjoyed cooking much, but has taken it on now, as her eyesight has gotten worse. The one dish he kept talking about was meatloaf — which, I admit, puzzled me a bit because I have no memory of her making meatloaf when I was growing up, and, as I leaned vegetarian from a very young age, meatloaf was just not a thing I really ate. It turns out that my mom started making meatloaf on occasion after I left home at 17, because my dad had some fond childhood memory about meatloaf that he’d shared with her.

By the third day of his waxing poetic on the charms of meatloaf (“My favorite part is the ends, I just love how the edges get all crispy, it’s the best part”), I decided that I just needed to make the man a meatloaf. I’ve made a vegan meatloaf on request a couple of times in the past, but I felt that I really just had to make a straight-up version to help my dad recapture that memory. Sometimes you have to set aside your own personal feelings to give someone the love they need.

I figured I couldn’t make exactly whatever my mom had made back in the day, but I could probably come pretty close. So I headed off to Publix and picked up the basic ingredients: ground beef, eggs, onions, celery, carrots, breadcrumbs, and so forth. I sautéed the mirepoix, mixed it with the beef, eggs, breadcrumbs, and spices, then added four ounces of finely chopped mushrooms, which I thought would add moisture to the mixture, since meatloaf has a reputation for being dry. In a moment of sudden inspiration, I grabbed the bottle of A1 Sauce — an ever-present condiment on our dining room table when I was growing up — and added a few good slugs to the mix. Patted it all into a loaf pan, spread a layer of Heinz ketchup across the top, and popped it into the oven for an hour.

The meatloaf that I made my dad last week — enough to last for a few meatloaf sandwiches, which seemed to make him pretty happy. You can see he’s already eaten both ends, where it gets crispy on the edges, his favorite part. Photo by Kristen Hartke.

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Needless to say, I did all of this while my dad was out. I could tell that my mom was a little bit worried that I was cooking something, because my dad had fussed at me in the past about “making a mess” of the kitchen (let me assure all of you, dear readers, that I’m EXTREMELY tidy in the kitchen, especially after many years of professional recipe testing). Their friend, looking up from his laptop, asked querulously, “You’re cooking something? Does John know?”

He found out when he got home, which was just about the time that I was sliding that loaf pan into the oven. I’d already cleaned the kitchen, just so he couldn’t lodge a complaint. He was grumpy and not feeling great and went to lie down for a couple of hours. By the time he rejoined me and my mother, he was in a better mood and, when I showed him the meatloaf, genuinely excited. When he took his first bite, and practically swooned with delight, I felt like I had made the right choice, putting his preferences and needs first, even if they didn’t perfectly line up with my own.

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