Well, I couldn't sleep. I think it has to do with the large cup of coffee I had around 5:30 this afternoon. Everytime I drink coffee after 4pm I am up all hours. Unless I dilute the coffee with liquor. That seems to work.

'What does this have to do with meatloaf?', you ask. It just so happens that one of the thoughts floating around in my scattered little mind while lying in bed was how much I loathe my father's hamloaf. When I say loathe, I mean loathe. The mere thought of this monstrosity still, to this day, actually, makes me cringe in a 'I'm about to be sick' sort of way. I am not sure why this has stayed with me. As a small child, I used to get violently ill when I smelled cooked eggs. That response was hard to break, but I managed and now I eat eggs regularly (egg salad still turns my stomach). So why is it that a loaf made of ham still haunts me at the ripe old age of 31. Its not like it was on regular rotation of the meals made by Dad repetoire. I only remember having to eat it twice and of it making an appearance, where I flatly refused, twice more after that. So why has this thing stuck with me?

My father grew up in odd circumstances and needless to say this affected his cooking. He is not a bad cook nor is he uncreative it is just that sometimes things he likes seem to come straight from the 'Tom Jode Cookbook'. I guess Newfoundland in the 30s and 40s was a rough place. Anyway, he used to keep these hams in the fridge kinda like this one (not to disparage the fine folks at Maple Leaf):

I don't know if any of you has ever had to open one of these puppies, but they have this disgusting layer of gelatinous ham juice coating their entirety. It is just gross. Anyway, my father would keep one of these in the fridge for use in a quick lunch or snack or something. None of us ever seemed to eat them, but my father would cut off a slice here or there and eat it with cheese on crackers or flatbreads (before they were called flatbreads). Rarely, but on more than one occasion, he would run out of things to cook for dinner (either in the fridge or his imagination) and would grind or chop what was left of one of these suckers, mix it with things (to this day I have no idea what went in it, but I have a feeling rice was involved) and bake it in loaf form. It would be served with potato and some sort of green vegetable (steamed broccoli is a Dad fave) and mustard pickles. Sometimes my mother would take pity on us and make cheese sauce.

I may not have made this sound all that unappetising, but to this day I get queasy whenever I see this type of damn ham.