If by "Budget" you mean TASTELESS...

mmmmm... tasteless cooked beef.

Really, this wasn't a bad dish, I ate it happily and was left feeling full. It did it's job. But this is Not the kind of recipe that inspires Ina Garten to write cook books.

We started out shredding the carrot and potato, and then chopped the scallion and onion. My guess is that their intentions were that the carrot, potato and cottage cheese would be used as some sort of filler and would enable the cook to use less of the expensive meat. However, when you shred it so small, it doesn't take up much room. Further, it's so small that its taste is lost in the dish. Honestly, crumbled saltines would have made a better filler.

I am happy to report that during all of this chopping, we didn't once sing "She's chopping broccoli", for which I think we should be commended. (Yay Us. Giggity)

Into the bowl with the carrot, potato, onion, scallion, an egg and a mess of cottage cheese. Nothing says "this is gonna be a great dinner" like gross looking orange stuff.

Maybe adding the meat will make it look less disgusting?

Wrong again.

Okay, into the dish, into the oven, cross your fingers and let's go watch the new Netflix documentary that came today. (We watched "Wal-Mart: The high cost of low price" by Robert Greenwald; it was quite good and I highly recommend it to you.)

WARNING: The following contains graphic images that may be disturbing or offensive to some viewers

Viewer discretion is advised.

We took the cottage cheese meatloaf out of the oven and really, the first thing, the only thing, that we could notice was the shocking amount of grease that was pooled around the edges. Now, we're a couple of girls who don't mind grease. In fact, give me a greasy hamburger or steak and cheese sandwich any day of the week. But this is ridiculous to be quite honest.

Grease is the time, is the place, is the motion. Grease is the way we are feeling...

We were looking at it and figuring out how we could impress upon you the amount of grease floating around this mess.....when Mara thought showing the depth of the grease would be a good idea.

Plus there's the added benefit of soaking out some of the Fluid O' Fat.

And yet it wasn't quite enough...our meatloaf was still swimming in the stuff. It was sort of like taking a Tylenol after a bear gnaws your arm off; right idea, wrong drug.

So, Mara then suggested we get out the turkey baster, and end this madness once and for all.

And you know we measured it. Yes folks, 2/3 of a cup. Say it with me, "niiiice".

Okay, grease crisis averted, and we are back to eating the cottage cheese meatloaf. Really, it didn't taste bad, it just didn't really taste. It was literally as if we put the meat in a pan and cooked it through with some chopped onion. You couldn't taste any of the scallion, and it really could have used some garlic or any kind of spice really. And it wasn't really that budget conscious either, it was about $3 cheaper than the fantastic Swedish meatballs we had last week. Save your money folks, buy some Ramen...its cheaper, tastier and resembles actual food.

Stay tuned...more next week. We will try to have our first guest commentator and if anyone has any requests for a particular type of food, we may entertain entertaining them.