Sheet Pan Dinner Herb Seasoned Pork with Roasted Sweet Potatoes and Pears

Sheet Pan Dinner

Cook's Notes: A sweet and savory dish to brighten up your weekday meal. For this recipe I used a prepared seasoned (rosemary and garlic) Pork Loin Fillet from Hormel. Since some of the ingredients needed longer baking times, they were added to the sheet pan in different stages. Use a semi-firm pear not soft so it will hold up better for baking. 

Recipe serves 4 and can easily be increased to serve more just double the roasting sauce. 

Ingredients;

• 1 prepared pork loin fillet
• 2 large sweet potaotes, peeled and quartered 
• 2 Bosc pears, peeled and diced in large chunks
• 1/2 large red onion, cut in strips
• 1/3 cup each dried cranberries and coarsley chopped walnuts. 

Roasting sauce

• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1/4 teaspoon each pumpkin pie spice and cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon dried sage
• 1 tablespoon honey 

Directions:

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees and line a baking sheet with parchment paper. 
• Center pork in middle of pan and roast for 30 minutes uncovered. Remove pan from oven and change oven temperature to 425 degrees.  
• In a large bowl add onions, sweet potaoes and chopped pears. Add in oil, spices and honey. Mix well and spread out evenly around the pork fillet. Roast for 15 minutes and add in cranberries and walnuts. Roast 5 minutes longer. 
• Remove pan from oven, tent with foil and let ingredients rest 10 minutes before serving.  

Hungry for Poetry 

By Ralph Fletcher

First I saw him chew
a tender Japanese haiku.

He ate a foot-long sonnet
with mustard seed spread upon it.

He downed a bag of ripe cinquains
while walking in the pouring rain.

He gulped an epic, chomped an ode,
wolfed a couplet to cure his cold.

He munched so many limericks,
they made him absolutely sick.

He tried a plate of fresh free verse;
but all that did was make things worse.

He took some onomatopoeia
to cure a case of diarrhea.

He ate a poem of sixteen lines,
and after that he felt just fine.