Pineapple Pork

Here's a recipe for you to try.  Straight from my electric skillet.

1 small pork loin roast (1-2 lbs), cut into bite-size pieces
1 can pineapple chinks (or tidbits) in pineapple juice (not syrup), drained, reserve juice
1-2 tbsp. corn starch
3 Tbsp. rice wine vinegar
3Tbsp. lower sodium soy sauce
1/2 cup water
1 tsp. dark honey (or whatever you have, I have local buckwheat honey.)
salt
pepper
sesame seeds
rice
asian veggie blend (I use birdseye brand)
cooking spray

Sprinkle corn starch, salt, & pepper over pork & toss to coat while preheating a non-stick skillet sprayed with cooking spray (with a lid, I use my electric skillet).  Place pork into skillet on high heat in a single layer & brown on both sides.

Add pineapple juice, vinegar, soy sauce & water.  Simmer on medium-high, covered for 8 minutes.  Uncover & continue simmering until the liquid is cooked down & thicker. Add pineapple & honey. Continue cooking another minute or two to heat the pineapple through. Turn off.

Serve with steamed asian veggies & rice.  Sprinkle sesame seeds on top.

I know it sounds like a lot of ingredients that you might not have on hand, but I have found that we eat this for dinner several times a month and once you have the vinegar, soy sauce, sesame seeds, etc. you can make this as a "pantry meal."  We keep pork roast & asian veggies in the freezer all the time.

If you try it, let me how how you like it!  I threw this together one night after a long day out and about, hoping for a tasty, quick dinner.  It took several times to "perfect" it, but I personally think it is quite tasty.  I keep forgetting to take a photo of it, but next time we have it, I promise I will take one.  It not only tastes good, it looks really nice on the plate! The whole thing takes about 20 minutes to make- if you're cooking your rice & vegetables at the same time as the pork.  Yum!

My Very Own Recipe: Lime Chicken & Rice

I'm finally doing it. Thanks to Molly Piper's call for low-fat recipes and my inability to find my already written recipe, I'm finally putting it right here for the world to see.

Backstory: Roger and I were working out a lot and trying to get healthy one winter. We were eating chicken and rice for dinner 3-4 nights a week at least and we were just plain tired of chicken with only salt and pepper. One day I made chicken fajitas and as I was making it, I thought, "hmm. I wonder if we could use the marinade for the fajitas to flavor the chicken bites we're eating all the time?" And thus it was born. Lime Chicken and Rice. Just ask Roger, it's one of his favorites! If I've given you this recipe before and the measurements are slightly different, it's because I never had a "recipe" for the chicken, I've always just dumped and poured and hoped for the best. The good thing is that you don't have to be very precise with this recipe. It comes out tasting good every time. (Well, except for the time I tried to sub lemon juice for lime juice because we didn't have any more lime juice... yeah, don't do that.)

Ingredients:

Boneless Skinless Chicken Breasts (you can even use frozen ones w/o thawing them) The same amount as you would use to feed your family if you were grilling it.
Olive Oil- just enough to coat the bottom of the pan
Salt & Pepper- a dash of salt, couple grinds of pepper
Chili Powder- 1/2 to 1 tsp. (you want to cover the chicken and turn the lime juice orange, start with the 1/2 tsp the first time you make it, I think. I'll measure the next time and update this when I do.)
Lime Juice- 1/2 cup (you may need more depending on the amount of chicken you are using. It should come up about 1/2 way on the chicken, definitely don't cover the chicken entirely with it.)
Cilantro- cut up and sprinkled on top- optional.

Method:

Cut chicken into bite-sized pieces. Heat olive oil in a pan with a lid on medium high (I use a dutch oven, but a big skillet w/lid would work, too) Brown chicken in oil, add salt, pepper, chili powder, and lime juice, stir to coat evenly. Cover with lid and turn heat down a bit. (On my stove I brown on 8 or 9 and turn down to 7.) Let simmer in lime juice until it is evaporated, stirring occasionally. It usually takes 15-20 minutes. Turn heat off when lime juice is gone and let the heat of the burner brown the chicken a little bit again. (Be careful though because it burns easily at this point.)

Serve with Rice & topped with Cilantro.

Notes: You can increase the size of this recipe as much as you want. Just make sure you increase the spices and lime juice accordingly!

I start the rice in our rice cooker before I start cooking the chicken. It all finishes at about the same time.

Please let me know if you liked it or if you had problems with the recipe!r