Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 18, 1992                   TAG: 9203180084
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: E-7   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

SEND US YOUR FAVORITE QUICK-FIX RECIPE

Perhaps a hamburger-noodle crunch, or a cream-of-chipped-beef casserole?

For who among us doesn't have at least one back-of-the-box recipe in our food files - a '50s-inspired creation that you still call on when time's short, appetite's indiscriminating and company's not coming?

The name of this game is convenience. Send us your favorite quick-fix recipe, and we'll pass the word to other readers in an upcoming story.

Mail it (preferably on a 3- by 5-inch index card) by April 10 to: Fifties Fix, Roanoke Times & World-News, Features Department, P.O. Box 2491, Roanoke, 24010. Include your name and a daytime telephone number (in case we have questions), and attach a note telling us what the dish does for you and how you found it.

Stuck for ideas? Here's one to get you started. It's from Jane and Michael Stern's 1991 book, "American Gourmet: Classic Recipes, Deluxe Delights, Flamboyant Favorites and Swank `Company' Food from the '50s and '60s."

Meat Loaf Wellington

1 can (10 1/2 ounces) Campbell's condensed golden mushroom soup

2 pounds ground beef

1/2 cup fine dry bread crumbs

1 egg, slightly beaten

1/3 cup finely chopped onion

1 minced garlic clove

1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce

1/4 cup ketchup

1 can (8 ounces) referigerated crescent dinner rolls

1/3 cup sour cream

Preheat oven to 375.

Mix 1/2 cup of the soup with beef, bread crumbs, egg, onion, garlic Worcestershire and ketchup. Form the meat into a firm 8-by-4-inch loaf and place the loaf on a shallow baking pan. Bake 65 minutes.

Spoon fat out of the meat loaf pan. Separate rolls and overlap them on a floured pastry board, pressing to form them into one large blanket of dough big enough to completely cover the loaf. Place the blanket over the loaf and mold it to fit, trimming excess dough. (Use excess dough to make fleur-de-lis patterns or happy faces to stick on the crust, if desired.)

Return to the oven and bake 15 to 20 minutes longer, or until the crust is light golden brown.

In a saucepan, blend the remaining soup and sour cream and warm it over very low heat, thinning with up to 1/4 cup of water to create a smooth gravy. Ladle over individual slices of meat loaf en croute.