Cooking my first meal

For my challenge dish, I cooked an entire meal for my family, which is something I have never done before in my life. I decided to go with something everyone enjoyed and used a very old family recipe for meatloaf and for sides I made rice and green beans. The green beans and rice were simple enough, I either used the stove and a pot to heat them or tossed them in the microwave for a few minutes, but the meatloaf was pretty difficult as I had never really done anything like it before. The first problem was attempting to decipher the cursive written on the little recipe card that had been stained from what appears to be more than half a century of use. The next challenge was thawing out the meat which was a process that had to be carefully monitored or the meat would get nasty and it would ruin the dish. Then I mixed the meat with tomato sauce, onions, rice, salt and pepper and formed a loaf. After this, I poured the sauce on the meatloaf. I never actually knew what was in the sauce until now and was somewhat surprised at what went in it: mustard, more tomato sauce, Worcestershire sauce, vinegar and brown sugar. Then I popped the whole thing in the oven and an hour and half later it was ready to eat. I was proud of the results. It wasn't as good as when my mom makes it, but it was pretty good for someone who has never done it before. I think that the greatest challenge overall for me was trying to make sure everything was ready at the same time, which is something I could definitely work on. I misjudged the time it would take for the meatloaf to finish so I cooked the rice too soon and it had to be reheated, I cooked the green beans a little to late so everything had to sit for some time while the beans finished. However I had a lot of fun cooking and hope that I get to do this some more, it was definitely a good first experience.