My partner texted me from work and said, "How about popcorn for dinner?" So, out comes the Stir Crazy and popcorn and Diet Coke it will be! That leftover beef stew will keep another day.

I love my Stir Crazy. Every kernel pops, even the cheap stuff. I've been a fan ever since I was a young man and my older married sister had one. They had popcorn almost every night (not for dinner, but for a late night TV watching snack. When I would visit, there would be leftovers on the counter the next day and it was still good!

Leftover pizza. I'm slowly purging the house of junk food.

Best meatloaf ever, Salpicon al Queso.

One of those days meant that dinner was

A surprisingly not-too-bad grocery store version of a huli chicken
Leftover homemade biscuits fetched from the freezer
Orange slices
Oven-roasted asparagus (black pepper, basil, garlic salt)
Oreos

Poached salmon (sherry cooking wine because our bottle of 2000 Chardonnay had gone off)
Baked potatoes, albeit wrapped in foil with big salt and olive oil - a new way of baking them.
assd roasted vegetables

waffle cone with Robbins rocky road & Robbins peanut butter chocolate
waffle cone with Robbins icing on the cake & Trader Joe’s chocolate chip

Tell us about it. I just copied it - coincidentally I bought 2 lbs. lean ground beef today.

It's one of my favorite comfort dishes. Has been a while, as in a few years, since we had it.

We had 2 lbs. of ground beef in the fridge and my wife asked me what I wanted for dinner, so it just popped into my mind. Then we couldn't find the 28 some years old newspaper clipping. I remembered that there was no meatloaf in the article title but couldn't remember the key words. We remembered that it started with "Sal" but not much more. I spend at least an hour googling; I used various combinations of meatloaf, ground beef, cheddar cheese, mushrooms, tomato sauce, etc., as key words to no avail. I even consulted a Spanish kitchen companion dictionary. Went through all the "S" entries, but still no luck.

Then my wife said queso. I then googled "site:latimes.com queso meatloaf" and bingo, first result. It's a lot of patshke, but so good. It's going to last us for three dinners. I was also able to find a reprint of the where the recipe was originally published.

I opened a bottle of 2016 Olivares Monastrell Altos de la Hoya to go along with it.

Interesting recipe especially the part about beating and folding in the egg whites. What is the texture like? I assume it is not dense like a regular meatloaf is but it holds together ok? I like the breadcrumb coating idea too.

It holds firm together and does not fall apart, but it is not dense or rubbery like some meatloaves or meatballs can get. The flavor is divine. The sauce goes great with mashed potatoes. That and a salad make a great dinner.

I'm offended by the categorization of pizza as junk food! Unless it's prepared in a microwave.

We had a homemade pepperoni pizza with onion, serrano, and banana peppers last night, with a nice salad.

Does "unhealthy" work?

lol...I suppose it depends on how you make it. Certainly almost all of the ones you order are unhealthy. When we make them here, I tend to go easy on the cheese, a very thin crust, and load up veggies. The pepperoni is really the unhealthy part, but overall not terrible. But I get it, not something any of us should be eating every night!

When I eat pizza, which is a rare occurrence now, I tend to go for unhealthy pizza, because it is a treat.

Most delicious and even healthy things probably still need some form of moderation and variety. We definitely try to do things weekly even if there’s a consistent theme of blood carbs sugar cholesterol cow caffeine cannabis potassium

This gets my vote for sentence of the month. I think my favorite parts were "blood...cow...cannabis potassium". It's only the 6th though, still time to beat it.

Tonight, chicken piccata and broccolini. I made the chicken a few weeks ago with no recipe, and probably a couple non-traditional minor tweaks. My wife liked it so much that she's going to try to make it tonight from a recipe. Her version will be more authentic, but it will be interesting to see if she likes it as much.