Pork Chops Buried in Dressing

Buried beneath a layer of delicious sage dressing, you'll find tender pork chops, seasoned and browned first in a heavy skillet. Served with just a tossed salad or maybe an English Pea Salad, it is a wonderful and tasty meal. Good for big family dinners as well as holiday specials.

Ingredients:

• 8 pork chops
• 1 cup flour
• 1/2 cup shortening*
• salt
• pepper
• 8 cups bread cubes**
• 1 whole egg
• 1/4 cup chopped onion
• 2 Tbsp. chopped celery (leaves OK)
• 1/4 tsp. salt
• 1/4 tsp. pepper
• 1/2 tsp. ground dried sage
• 2 cups boiling water***

*Today I would substitute olive oil for the shortening as it's much healthier.

**Bread cubes would have been leftover biscuits and baked corn bread as well as any crusts or ends of homemade yeast breads. Nothing like that was ever wasted.

***Today I would add only 1 cup water and substitute a can of cream of chicken soup (undiluted) for the other cup of water.

Directions:

Heat shortening (or olive oil) in a large cast iron skillet. Mix salt and pepper in with the flour. Dip the pork chops in the flour mixture, shake to remove excess flour and brown in the hot skillet.

Remove chops from the skillet and place in the bottom of a lightly buttered baking pan.

Combine the bread cubes, egg, chopped onion, celery salt, pepper, ground sage, and boiling water (and soup if using).

Pour the mixture evenly over the chops. Bake in a preheated 325 degrees F oven for 1 hour. Allow to sit for 5 minutes before serving (I'm not sure just why it needed to sit, but since Miss Etta wrote it, that's what I do.)

Source: My dear friend, Miss Etta. This is a very old-fashioned recipe and most likely came from a weekly newspaper in the UP area of Michigan back in the 1920's. Miss Etta would bake a beautiful large turkey at Thanksgiving and again at Christmas, but never stuffed it with "stuffing". She'd always make the "Pork Chops Buried in Dressing" in a huge baking pan, and we'd all kinda stir around in the dressing to be sure we "found" a pork chop to go with the rest of an already lavish meal.

Of course, there were always enough pork chops to serve everyone, but it was fun to watch the guys as they kept their eyes on the other fellas to make sure they didn't get 2 pork chops. :-)

The last big family meal she prepared on earth was a Thanksgiving Dinner for 18, and she and her hubby did it all by themselves. She was already 90 years old. A truly amazing and beautiful lady.

By Julia from Boca Raton, FL