The Other White Meat

In an effort to overcome my culinarily lazy tendencies, I made a dinner menu for this week. On Saturday we bought the ingredients necessary to accomodate our gourmet, low calorie delicacies, and Sunday dinner began our quest for gastronomic pleasure. We had chili burgers, which although more like Mexican sloppy joes, were delicious.

Last night, however, we enjoyed Fajita Pork and Pasta, a Weight Watchers recipe. I'm leery of pork, but this was delicious, so delicious in fact that I am blogging about the recipe. The ingredients are as follows:

1/8 tsp table salt, or to taste (for cooking pasta)
6 oz uncooked whole-wheat pasta, penne recommended
2 Tbsp olive oil, divided
6 Tbsp fresh lime juice, divided
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp chili powder
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1 pound lean pork tenderloin, thinly sliced*
1 medium yellow pepper(s), sliced into thin strips
1 medium sweet red pepper(s), sliced into thin strips
1 medium green pepper(s), sliced into thin strips
1/3 cup carrot(s), thickly shredded
1 medium onion(s), cut into thin wedges
4 oz canned green chili peppers, mild, drained, chopped
1 medium zucchini, cut in half lengthwise and sliced


I did not use any canned green chili peppers (I didn't have any and didn't buy any, oops!). Also, I thought it would be a waste to buy lime juice, so I opted to use the lemon juice I already had at home. Also, I used regular pasta. Weight Watchers (and many other diet programs) often encourage the use of whole grain pastas and breads because they have more fiber and therefore are more filling. Calorie-wise, they are usually about the same.

Anyhoo... On to the instructions. I combined the spices and lemon juice and half of the olive oil in a bowl, then dipped the pork in to coat. In a frying pan, with the other half of the oil heated I cooked the pork and the leftover juice mixture for about 4 minutes on either side. While it was cooking I chopped up the vegetables and popped them in the frying pan. I added more lemon juice (I didn't measure, but it was probably about 2 tablespoons), covered and let steam for about 7 minutes while the pasta cooked. Once the pasta was done and the vegetables were tender, I combined the two and served.




This photo shows just how colorful the meal is. I give full credit to the Weight Watchers website for the photo and list of ingredients.



The meal was fantastic, and filling. Note: the ingredients as listed are to serve 4.