I loved my mom. I want that known up front before I start talking smack about her cooking — and honestly, she had a hopeless task: She had to feed nine people three times a day. And she made some wonderful dishes; I particularly remember her apple pie. And I was a picky little shit until I hit adolescence, when suddenly almost no food was safe near me.

But cow parts suffered at her hands. They just did, and we all knew it, and nobody wanted to admit it. (This feels like the point where I should remind everyone again that I loved my mom.)

Pot roast, which is a great way to feed a crowd, was torture-roasted into chewy submission (I loved my mom. Did I mention that I loved my mom?), and that was a near-weekly meal for us. That wasn’t The Worst, though. The Worst was meatloaf.

Mom’s meatloaf triggered me. I hated the white bread chunks (my mom didn’t use breadcrumbs), the egg and the unidentifiable non-hamburger flavors, all mixed into what once had been perfectly good ground beef. She then cooked it until it took on meteorite-like qualities. I thought the texture was “weird” in a way only a 10-year-old can think of things as “weird,” but I couldn’t get up from dinner until I made a passing attempt at eating it or slipped some to the dog. He wasn’t too excited about it, either.

I reclaimed pot roast in my 20s. For that, I thank the now-defunct Black-Eyed Pea restaurant in Little Rock. It was my go-to joint for chicken-fried steak, but I tried the pot roast after a server heard my tale and arm-twisted me. It was so good that it made me angry. I subsequently learned to make a decent version of it myself, and I’ve made my peace with it.

The Black-Eyed-Pea had meatloaf, too. However, there was no damn way I was going to order a slice of gray meat cake. Even watching other customers eat it set me off.

But now that I’m well into my personal Back Nine, I feel I should confront this meatloaf problem. I mean, I eat sushi now, for chrissakes; the very existence of that food product still stirs revulsion in my Inner Midwesterner. And I have had many a kubideh kabob, which is basically Meatloaf on a Stick; Moby Dick‘s version was a go-to lunch when I worked in the Dupont Circle area.

So I’m going to hunt for meatloaf recipes and give this a shot, and I’ll keep you updated. Feel free to send along any recipes/suggestions. NO KETCHUP GLAZE RECIPES PLEASE. Eww.