When a singer names himself after a dinner item, you know it has to be good. Meat Loaf is one such instance.

But meat loaf was made popular long before the singer rode the name to stardom. In fact, a Chinese immigrant bricklayer in New York City in1925 first brought meat loaf to light.

As the legend goes, and I’ve done the research, Mi Lo Fu came to the United States in the early 1920s. Fu learned his masonry trade in the Orient and brought his skills west to help support his family back home in his native village of Lai One Hi.

Fu was an astute worker. He put to shame other immigrants on various building projects and soon became legendary in New York City for his artistry in laying brick. He constructed landmark buildings including the Block Four House and the Block Five House. In addition to his masonry skills, Fu was revered by the city’s elite as a cook extraordinaire; due mostly to his quick adaptation to western ways of cooking. Minus the rice vinegar and peanut oil of his native land, Fu quickly learned to create dishes utilizing fresh meats from the local stockyards.

Mi Lo Fu quickly made a name for himself in the inner-circles of New York creating food dishes and landscapes beyond compare. That, in turn, created a jealous buzz in Chinatown, despite his good intent. While others in the small community eked out a living surviving on beans and rice, Fu, due to his diligence and hard work, was paid handsomely and rewarded many times over with free meats and building contracts.

However, his arduous work and long hours eventually caught up with him. One wickedly hot summer afternoon, as the simmering sun scorched the city streets, Fu, atop a second-level building he was constructing, prepared a ground beef dish for lunch with the intent of taking it to a local baker’s shop to cook and offer to the contractor who had rewarded him work on the project. But exhaustion overcame him. Tired, barely able to move, Fu left his creation lay on a building brick. Nearly three hours passed when his fellow workers, smelling the aroma of ground beef baking in the summer sun, discovered Mi Lo Fu fast asleep in a pile of cool sand.

Excited cries from jealous co-workers echoed for a city block. “Mi loaf! Mi loaf!” A crowd soon gathered. The city’s local hero was slumbering and an envious community of immigrants was rejoicing: “Mi loaf! Mi loaf!”

The workers quickly gobbled up the bricklayer’s lunch as he lay in deep sleep.

Records don’t document the fate of Mi Lo Fu. What we do know is that the excited cries of “Mi loaf, Mi loaf,” and the dish Mi Lo Fu created, eventually became “meat loaf.”

The rest is ground beef history.

Meat loaf

1 pound ground beef

1 egg

1 small onion (chopped)

1/2 cup of bread crumbs

1/2 cup of milk

1 green pepper (diced)

Ketchup

Worchester sauce

Garlic powder

Preheat your oven to about 375 degrees. In a large mixing bowl, add ground beef and egg and mix well. Add your onion, bread crumbs, milk, green pepper and mix it again. Once again, until it looks fully blended. Add four shakes of Worchester sauce and five shakes of garlic powder (or salt), mix again.

Put mixture in a meatloaf pan (if you have one) or a small 9 x 11 casserole dish and spread out the mixture until it looks uniform (the same thickness). Top with as much ketchup as you want and spread it evenly. Some people like a lot, others not so much. Remember, this is according to your taste.

Bake approximately 45 minutes to an hour, depending on the cooking dish you use. You’ll know it’s done when the ground beef is no longer pink. Simply cut into it after 45 minutes. If you see pink, cook it another 15 minutes. You can’t go wrong.