Raspberry Pork Tenderloin and Chipotle Sweet Potatoes

About a week ago I posted to my facebook status that I had gotten a coupon from Bzz Agent for a free Alexia frozen food product, and that I had bought some Spicy Sweet Potato Fries. My friend Brian suggested I make it with something Pork-like, and it got the wheels spinning in my head. The "spice" in the potatoes was chipotle, and I had in the past made a chipotle raspberry pork tenderloin from Dinner Zen. What if I tried to recreate it, but left out the chipotle in the sauce, since it would be in the fries?

What followed was fantastic. Truly delicious. Here's the recipe:

Raspberry Pork Tenderloin
1 pork tenderloin
1/4 c raspberry jam
1 T apple cider vinegar
salt & pepper
thyme, tarragon, oregano (all dried)
1/2 a small onion, chopped
a little olive oil

Prepare pork tenderloin by rubbing with olive oil. Sprinkle with salt, pepper, tarragon, thyme, and oregano. Place it in a baking dish and bake at 400 degrees for about 45 minutes, turning once.
While the pork is cooking, saute the chopped onion with a little bit of salt and pepper. When the onions are soft, add the jam and vinegar, and stir until the jam melts, Keep on low until the pork is done. Let pork rest for a few minutes and slice, then pour sauce over the slices.

If you choose to make the Alexia Spicy Sweet Potatoes, you'll want to put them in about 25 minutes before the pork is done. The recipe will say 20 minutes, but you're sharing oven space and you'll need the extra time to make sure they end up crispy like fries, and not soggy, like, um, soggy fries.

Now, for the verdict. The raspberry sauce was spectacular. The pork was delicious. And the seasoning on the fries made the whole dish more reminiscent of the original dish that I had (that had the chipotle peppers in the sauce). The kids loved the pork and the "dip." The three year old thought the fries were too spicy, but he cut the spice by eating a piece of pork dipped in the raspberry dip. The 9 month old actually loved the sweet potatoes as is, and kept screaming for more. The husband and I loved the fries but thought that by the time we got to the end of them, the taste off chipotle was overpowering everything. Still, as sweet potato fries go, they were pretty delicious and much easier than slicing sweet potatoes by myself! One thing that I will caution--the serving size says 3 oz or 30 fries. This is off. If you are measuring for weight-loss purposes, make sure to weigh the fries and don't count on 30 being a serving size, as it was closer to 20-25.

And as for the pork, if you have a BJ's near you, you should check there, because ours had a pack of 4 pork tenderloins for $14 (it looked like 2 in the package but it was really 4!). So I actually prepped two of this meal and stuck one in the freezer, and then prepped another 2 freezer meals with the other two. Great deal, and I'll have the recipe for the other one up here after we taste test it!  To prep this recipe for the freezer, do the seasoning and olive oil and stick in a ziploc bag, then saute the onions, and place the sauteed onions, jam, and vinegar in a separate bag, and store together in an outer bag. Defrost before baking.

Baked Chicken with Orzo

A few trips to Dinner Zen-ago, I made this really yummy dish of baked shrimp with orzo. Today, having nothing really ready to go for dinner, I realized I had orzo, and lemons, and tomatoes, and I could wing the rest of it.

1 cup (uncooked) orzo

2 4-oz chicken breasts

1 15-oz can of diced tomatoes

zest off of 1 lemon

juice of the same lemon

1T dried oregano

salt/pepper

Cook orzo and drain. Cut up chicken into bite-sized pieces. Combine chicken and orzo with diced tomatoes, lemon zest, lemon juice, oregano, salt, and pepper. Pour into a square baking pan and bake covered (with foil) for an hour at 350.

Serves 3, at 6 points per serving. You can add 1/2 cup of feta cheese to the mix for an additional 2 points per serving.

I would say that this would probably freeze well (since the Dinner Zen one was a freezer meal). Make a double or triple batch and press into Gladware bakers to freeze.

Ham, Green Bean, and Potato Soup

It's COLD in Northern Virginia, especially for people who are not used to this kind of cold! My husband asked for SOUP, and how could I deny him? Since we had no soup fixin's in the house, I asked what kind of soup he wanted, and he said, "How about Ham, Green Bean, and Potato?"

An EXCELLENT idea. I went shopping. No good green beans, but frozen ones were on sale. I decided that if I was going to make Ham, Green Bean, and Potato Soup, I was going to make a LOT of it. We had an excellent lunch, and still have a quart of soup in the fridge and 2 quarts in the freezer. Here's your recipe:

Ham, Green Bean, and Potato Soup

About 3 cups of ham--if you have leftovers then that's great, otherwise go buy one of those very small cooked hams and cut it up into about 1/2 inch cubes

3 large potatoes, also diced into 1/2 inch cubes

1 large onion, sliced

3 cloves garlic, minced

1 large bag (32 oz) of frozen green beans

2 boxes of chicken broth (32 oz) (I used low sodium because we have the ham; see note on salt in directions)

pepper

salt

1T thyme

garlic powder

1 bay leaf

cooking spray

Saute onion and garlic in cooking spray on medium. When the onion is soft, add ham and green beans and stir until green beans defrost (you can skip that part if you are using fresh) Add potatoes and chicken broth, bay leaf, thyme, pepper to your taste (I like it peppery) and a little garlic powder (think a sprinkle). Wait on the salt! I repeat! Do NOT ADD SALT yet! Your salt addition will depend on how salty your ham was to start, and you can seriously oversalt it if you add too much.

Bring it all to a boil, cover, and reduce to medium. Take a taste of the broth and add some salt if you think it needs it. Continue cooking until potatoes are soft, or longer. Remove bay leaf if you can find it, or warn everyone that there's a bay leaf to not eat :)

Makes a hearty lunch for 2 people, plus 3 additional quarts for later. Serve it with a hearty artisan bread. Fall over yourself over how good it is!

I put this into WW's recipe builder and based on 8 servings (which are NICE sized servings) it is 5 points per serving. If you use lean ham, it is 4 points.

Another Trip to Dinner Zen

In preparation for my Saturday trip to Dinner Zen, I have been rearranging and eating out of my freezer. Tonight, Micah and I will be sharing the final tilapia filet from my last trip, and after that I have 2 squash wraps left from that trip. They will be fine lunches next week, or maybe even a dinner.

For those of you who are going with me this time (we have a group of 8 and may become 9 soon), here are some freezer tips for getting your freezer ready for a DZ trip:

1) In the future, you'll realize that freezing liquids takes up a lot of room if you freeze them in hard tupperware/rubbermaid containers. Freeze soups, broths, stews, and sauces in freezer bags, packed flat. You can fit a lot more in the freezer that way. If it's too late, it's time to eat or use your soups, stews, and sauces to make room for your meals :)

2) If you have giant bags of frozen foods (like perogies, fish filets, etc), you can re-package them into freezer bags. Package by however many you need for a family meal, and then you can fit them into small spaces left over by your large meals. This is a good way to use the unused door space.

3) Suck the air out of stuff. If you don't have a vacuum sealer (I don't!) then just close your freezer bag nearly to sealed, stick in a straw, and suck out the remaining air before closing the seal. You'll save a lot of space that way.

4) Repackage if you have to. Dinner Zen and a lot of other places have meals prepared into a tin for baking. When you bring your food home, you can pack everything in to over-full, then take out the tins and repackage into freezer bags. Don't let your packaging take up valuable food space! When it's time to make some of these meals, you can get out a reusable/washable pan, and defrost it into that pan.

I'm really looking forward to this trip! They have Big Bleu Chops again, and based on our last experience with them, I ordered 2 full orders of them! Yum.

OK, off to check on dinner.

Swiss Chard and Chicken Quesadillas

Last week our CSA newsletter came with a recipe for Chard Quesadillas. I made them this weekend and Omnomnom. We thought that if we added chicken it might be very good too.

So I did. And Double Omnomnom mostly because they have a different texture with the chicken. So here's your recipe. I prepped 8, cooked one to share with my kiddo, and froze the rest.

Swiss Chard and Chicken Quesadillas

1 lb bag of shredded mexican cheese

8 large flour tortillas

2 chicken breasts

sazon goya and adobo or whatever you like to season your chicken breasts

1 large bunch of chard

salsa

Chop up chard into small pieces, stems and leaves together. Place in a microwave safe bowl with a lid (or a plate for a lid) and cook for 4 minutes. You shouldn't need to add water if you have washed the chard--whatever water sticks to the leaves is enough to steam it.

Cook chicken breasts, seasoned however you like. I used 1 packet of sazon goya and a sprinkle of adobo. You can cook them however you like to--I used my Pampered Chef covered baker and cooked them from frozen in the microwave in 10 minutes, but if you don't have one, you can boil, broil, pan fry or whatever it takes to get it cooked and seasoned. Then chop the chicken really well.

If you are going to freeze these, prep 8 pieces of aluminum foil large enough to hold an open tortilla. Build your quesadillas by layering ingredients on one side of the tortilla (so you can fold it over). Layer Cheese, Chard, Chicken, Salsa, and more Cheese. Fold over.

If you are freezing them, fold over the foil and wrap it up. If not, spray a pan with cooking spray, place quesadilla on the pan, and spray the top. Bake at 300 degrees for 10 minutes on the first side and another 5 on the other side.

If you are cooking from frozen, spray both sides of the quesadilla with cooking spray and bake at 300 degrees for 15 minutes on the first side and 10 minutes on the second side. (potentially will come back to fix this after baking one from frozen, but quesadillas from Dinner Zen cooked well this way).

This was a HUGE hit with my toddler. I haven't seen him devour anything so quickly in a long time.