Low Fat, Gluten Free, Vegan Meatless Meatloaf

This recipe is for a low fat, gluten free, vegan meatless meatloaf that is suitable for The Daniel Fasting Lifestyle. (I realize calling it a, "vegan meatless meatloaf" sounds a little redundant, but it gets the message across, right?)

I don't know about you, but I don't have fond memories of my mom's meatloaf (sorry mom.) My mom's family is German and they used to own, run and manage German restaurants. My aunt can do some serious homestyle German cooking, mom not so much. Truth be told, I never did care for all that meat based food, even as a child. 

Mom's meatloaf pretty much consisted of hamburger meat, eggs and breadcrumbs, topped with the oblatory ketchup "glaze." No one else in the family seemed to have a problem with consuming all that meat. (We ate meat at every meal, except for breakfast. Breakfast pretty much consisted of cake. Yeah, cake. I used to scratch my head and wonder about that one, but after talking to some other grown up German-American kids, I soon realized that situation was pretty much the norm.)

Back to the recipe. I pilfered this recipe from Back to Her Roots and modified it to make it gluten free and Daniel fasting friendly.

Ingredients:

The tangy glaze:

• 1/2 cup unsweetened, oil free tomato sauce
• 2 tablespoons of apricot preserves
• 1 teaspoon paprica
• 2 tablespoons of mustard (I prefer the grainy type.)
• 2 - 3 tablespoons of water

The meatloaf:

• 1 cup cooked small grain brown rice or cooked millet
• 1/2 a large green or red pepper, diced
• 1 medium carrot, finely shredded
• 2 green onion stalks, finely chopped
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 1 can of white beans, drained and rinsed
• 1 can of pinto beans, drained and rinsed
• 2 tablespoons of paprika
• fresh ground cracked black pepper to taste - Adding salt at this point would be overkill, as the canned beans would have been bathing in it for quite some time.)

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
2. In a bowl, whisk the tangy glaze ingredients together and set aside.
3. Dice the garlic and fresh peppers up. Shred the carrot and cut the green onion up into thin little slices. Set aside.
4. Next, add the beans. Blend until smooth, but not too smooth. You still want those beans to retain some texture. (You may want to do this part in batches unless you have a Vitamix or food processor.) Finally mix the bean mixture, chopped veggies and grains together.
5. Pour into a lightly greased loaf pan. 
6. Pour glaze on top.
7. Bake for 30 - 35 minutes.

BTW ~ You can also shape the "meatloaf" mixture into little meatball shapes. Bake them, just like the meatloaf, but keep your eye on them. You don't want to over cook them. Or you can make little mini-meatloafs by baking the "meatloaf" mixture in a muffin  pan.