Cooking light to make me light.

Taking medication that makes you gain weight is crap. Seriously, it's horrible. Especially when you've worked all year at maintaining your previous weight loss. But since I'm now off said meds, and am trying to knock off these extra five pounds, I'm sticking with Cooking Light meals this week.

I bought a bag of pre-cubed sweet potatoes a couple days ago, so I knew pork would go well...but pork can be boring, so I turned to cookinglight.com for inspiration.

Did my thing and added/substituted what I had, and was very happy with the result. Heads up, it makes a lot of chutney. And for the potatoes, I boiled them in water about 6 minutes, drained them, and mashed them with a 1/2 tbsp butter and about an 1/8 cup 1% milk, a big pinch of salt and fresh ground pepper. And they were really, really good.

Pork with Apricot Chutney
2 tbsp brown sugar
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp pepper
2 tsp cider vinegar
pinch salt
1 lb boneless pork chops
Cooking spray
water
1 cup dried apricot, coarsely chopped
1 small onion, coarsely chopped
1/3 cup cider vinegar
small handful craisins or raisins
large pinch each nutmeg, all spice, cinnamon and a couple cloves (or 1.5 tsp pumpkin pie spice)
1 tsp dry mustard
1/4 tsp crushed red pepper
1 small apple, chopped

Preheat oven to 375°.

Combine sugar, cumin, pepper, vinegar and salt in a shallow dish. Mix well. Add pork to dish, turning to coat. Cover and let it marinate in the fridge until ready to cook.

In saucepan, combine 1/2 cup water, apricot, craisins, nutmeg, cinnamon, all spice, cloves, and mustard. Bring to a boil, reduce to simmer, cover, and cook 20 minutes. Add apple and 1/2 cup water, simmer covered another 20 minutes. Uncover and let sit until ready to eat.

In the meantime, place marinated pork on a broiler pan coated with cooking spray. Bake at 375° for about 20 minutes. Serve with a scoop of chutney. Serves 4. About 255 cals, 5g fat, 3g fiber, 30g carbs, 26g protein