Meat Loaf With Mushroom Gravy

My mom's meat loaf is inarguably better than yours, but this is not my mom's meat loaf recipe. This one is an amalgam, intended to evoke all the important meat loaves in my life—and there have been many: The meat loaf I'd get at the family table as a child; the meat loaf I'd find (if I was lucky) in the steam table in the school cafeteria, usually festering in a pool of graying commercial gravy (God, I loved that stuff—especially when stoned); the meat loaf in the familiar foil tray of a Swanson TV dinner (which freed me from the oppression of a loving dinner table!); and the meat loaf my bosses insisted I keep on the menu at my first chef job—the restaurant failed, but the meat loaf was quite good. This, then is the sum of all those experiences.