marvin lee aday.

This would be more Google Maps Street View, Antarctica this time. It's like the worst video game ever. You can't even interact with the penguins when you eventually find one (and there is one just to the left of that clot of three researchers or penguin preservers or whatever they are in red at roughly the 3 o'clock position above).

Here's Svalbard, a remote Norwegian archipelago. The red flags in the distance show where the "street" is.

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In my non-globetrotting hours yesterday, I made meat loaf for the first time (I typed meta loaf first, something else entirely). I was having this weird persistent craving for it, and Mara was all yeah yeah do it so I did it. It was the slowest, most careful meat loaf in history I think, because meat loaf is not known for being something you linger over in the kitchen, and yeah man I lingered.

I lingered b/c me, being me, never having made it, and me, having the humongous and still awesome Cook's Illustrated The New Best Recipe as my guide, wanted to make sure I was doing it right. I mean why bother using such an exceedingly anal-retentive cookbook if you're not going to do exactly wtf it says.

The most awesome and humongous thing I learned is that meat loaf is not at anywhere near its best when it comes out of the oven. It needs time to contract or something and I guess just relax for a while. The absolute best bite I had of it yesterday was at 11pm, five hours after it came out of the oven, and I don't think that's (just) the post-mirtazapine munchies talking, because this morning's bite at 6:30am was even better (and the bite I just had for lunch was even better, etc, it's really good now). I just don't think it should be any warmer than room temperature.

My adaptation of the recipe is gluten-free, with almond flour as the filler, and I think I didn't do much else different except bumping up some of the seasoning and omitting the, eh, bacon. And substituting arugula for the parsley b/c I didn't have any and don't ever reallly love it anyway.

Oh yis, the other awesome thing I learned was to not use a, eh, "loaf pan". This is what Cook's Illustrated is good for, they're the Mythbusters of the kitchen: turns out that if you follow conventional wisdom and use a loaf pan (can't stop saying it, loaf pan, loaf pan) for your loaf, the, ulp, "juices" will bubble up around the sides about halfway through the cooking time and ruin the sides of your glaze, which was actually the most critical component, the glaze was, so its non-ruination and general maximalization is an absolutely stellar thing to focus on. Ze recipe below will double ze glaze amounts and add a shot or two of Frank's to it for zest and zing.

And if we don't do that recipe again, we should do this one.

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