Breadless Meat Loaf

In my on-going quest to avoid bread, grains, carbs, and everything that drives a weakened pancreas towards being fully diabetic, I began experimenting with ground Bison meat a few months ago.  Costco sells these 2-packs of ground Bison for ~$8 a pound or so, and the meat is good quality, grass fed, hormone free.  If you've ever seen a Bison in the wild, they're not very "manageable" as far as fences and enclosures are concerned.  They're HUGE, and they go where they want to go, knocking down fences at will and wandering wherever they feel the best grass may be.  Basically, they're magnetic, huge, dumb, indigenous walking meat bags.

150 years ago, herds of millions of Bison used to graze across the Great Plains, and their droppings fertilized, their hoof prints created the hard soil, and their appetites kept the grasses at manageable levels.  Then the European settlers came in, and corporate America w=in collusion with he Federal Government intentionally wiped out the herds of indigenous Bison that the native Americans relied upon for their food, clothing, and way-of-life, in order to "open up the West for development".  In the last 30 years or so, Bison herds have healthily bounced back to the point where harvesting them for food production is now viable, practical, and (since the white man developed all of their natural range) necessary to contain the population.  So I feel good about eating Bison once or twice a week.  They've been around since the last ice age, and will probably be around after all of the homo sapiens wipe each other out in the future.

My favorite use of Bison currently, is to make a bread-less meat loaf.  It's easy to make, and delicious.  Ingredients
- about 2 lbs of ground Bison
- 1/2 a head of organic celery, washed and chopped, no longer than your thumb
- At Least a Quart of organic portobello mushrooms (also available at Costo), chopped
- a 1/2 pound of diced, grass-fed "stew meat" (usually Top Sirloin, that the butcher counter has on sale)
- a Large pinch of lemon peel
- a pinch of chili powder
- 3 all spice balls
- a pinch of thyme
- as much home grown oregano as you have or want
- as much home grown rosemary as you have or want
- tons (2 or 3 cups) of ground up dried garlic (we have an old quart container that is [I believe] losing its potency)

In a large non-stick pan, heat up the bison in large "chunks" using a wooden spoon (it's a quality non-stick pan, remember) on the largest burner your stove has, until it is not blood red (but if you brown it, you're ruining it).  Heat up the stew meat until the outsides of it are no longer read.  Add the first round of garlic until the top of all the cooking meat is manilla colored.  Stir / mix the meat and let the seasoning intermingle.  Add in the chopped mushrooms, and stir until the mushrooms are immersed in the meat & juices coming from the meat.  Cover, reduce heat, and simmer for as long as it takes you to wash and chop the celery.

Note: at this point, you COULD add carrots or onions or cauliflower or other veggies if you want to, but I didn't want this to be high caloric (no carrots) nor highly cruciferous & gas producing.

Add the rest of the seasoning.  Mix it in.  Then add in the celery.  Mix further.

If you want to, you CAN add ground organic flax seed, to "thicken" the mix and soak up the residual juices... and I've done that.  Approximately 1 to 1.5 cups of ground organic flax seed can be added... BUT... it makes the final dish less savory in my opinion, and when making seal-able containers for lunches, the flax-seed laden mix "plops" out more as a solid mass, than a savory, mouth watering meal.

The total meal I described above makes two LARGE dishes the first night, and 2 large lunches for later int he week, as well as a small side-dish for your significant other who doesn't really like mushrooms as much as you, and picks them off her plate.

Bison as large as a 12 person passenger van, in Kelly Wyoming