Healthful Dinner Menu

I tried out some new recipes on Ben and a couple of our friends this week and they turned out surprisingly well!

I am always a little nervous to try out new things when we have people over, but thankfully it all turned out a lot better than I had anticipated!

The menu was:

Herb Roasted Pork Loin

Potatoes and Green Beans

Chocolate Cake

I chose the pork tenderloin because it is a rather inexpensive piece of meat and can feed at least four people, depending on the size you get. I also discovered that it is a relatively lean cut of meat (as lean as a chicken breast) and offers a good source of vitamin B6, niacin, thiamin and other nutrients! Who knew! I always equated pork with fat!

You can get the recipe I used here

This recipe also includes a sauce, which I forgot to make, but I just used the juices that had pooled in the pan after cooking the pork loin as our sauce and it was excellent!

I also used a 2 lb. pork loin instead of the 4lb. one in the recipe. It is great for having people over or to feed your hungry husband!

I also made Mashed Potatoes by boiling 4 sliced up potatoes in water for about 15 minutes with 3 cloves of garlic. I added 1/3 cup of olive oil and mashed them up to make a healthier version of mashed potatoes. I then boiled some fresh, trimmed green beans in the left over water for 8 minutes and then mixed them in with the mashed potatoes and sprinkled them with salt.

And my FAVORITE thing I made was the chocolate cake. It had absolutely no butter or oil in it and was one of the moistest cakes I have ever made! I made some slight adaptions on it from a recipe I found online.

For cake:

1 1/4 cups flour

1/3 cup cocoa or dark chocolate cocoa

1/2 cup sugar

1 tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. baking powder

dash of salt

1/2 cup buttermilk (reduced fat)

4 oz. jar baby food carrot puree

4 oz. jar baby food prune puree

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

1 tablespoon molasses (optional)

2 tablespoons brewed coffee

1 whole egg

1 egg white

1-1 oz. square semi-sweet chocolate, melted

1/4 cup dark chocolate chips

raspberry fruit preserves (i used sugar-free)

chocolate glaze or nonfat hot fudge

Preheat oven to 350 F. Combine first six ingredients in a large bowl and set aside. In a medium bowl, combine buttermilk, carrot and prune purees, vanilla extract, molasses, coffee, egg and egg white. Pour the liquid mixture into the dry mixture and combine until smooth. Add in the melted chocolate and the chocolate chips. Pour batter into a sprayed and floured 9" cake pan and bake in oven for 25-30 minutes. test with a toothpick to make sure its done.

Let cool on rack. Cut cake in half horizontally and spread fruit preserves on the bottom layer. Replace the top and spread top and sides with chocolate glaze.

I made the chocolate glaze by heating 6 TBSP of whipping cream in a saucepan to a boil. Once boiling, remove from heat and add 8-10 oz of dark chocolate chips, stir until smooth.

Its really, really good!! Seriously, Ben still loved it after I even told him it had baby food in it :)