By Sarah Condley

When pork loins are on sale, I typically purchase a couple and either cut them in half or cut them up into pork chops and put them in the freezer for later. I do this because Brad and I don’t need to eat a whole one by ourselves. Tough I like leftovers, I don’t want to eat it for a week.

So, when pork loins went on sale a couple of weeks ago, I purchased two. They were in the refrigerator waiting for me to get them ready to freeze when I started looking through my “other meat” folder for a pork recipe.

This recipe was handwritten on a Post-It note stuck to the inside of the folder.

I have absolutely no idea where the recipe came from, but I thought I had all of the ingredients called for.

I sliced one of the loins in half and sliced the other one into chops. I laid four chops aside and placed the rest of the pork in freezer bags, and using our handy vacuum sealer, got them ready for the freezer.

Then I was ready to prepare supper. I opened the cabinet looking for Italian-seasoned bread crumbs. There weren’t any on the shelf.

Since Brad is a little bit of a prepper, I checked to see if we had some in our stash. To my surprise, I had a couple packages of plain bread crumbs, but no Italian-seasoned ones.

As I stood there thinking about what kind of seasoning I could add to those plain ones, it hit me that I could use Pepperidge Farms seasoned stuffing instead.

I put some of the dry stuffing into a plastic zipper bag and used my grandmother’s old rolling pin, which is missing the handles, to beat the stuffing into crumbs.

That worked perfectly. If I’d been stressed, this would have been a great way to relieve some tension.

After putting all of the dry ingredients into a bowl and mixing them thoroughly, I realized this recipe made a lot of coating for four pork chops so I poured about half of it out onto a plate, knowing if I needed more I could pour more out.

This way whatever crumb mixture was left over could go into the freezer for another meal if we liked this recipe.

I oiled up the pork chops and one by one placed them in the crumb mixture and pressed it on to all sides of the chops.

I placed each chop into an ungreased baking dish, and when the oven had preheated, put them in for 40 minutes.

Brad got home just a few minutes before the timer sounded and when he and the food were ready, we sat down together for our evening meal. Brad said a prayer thanking God for all of our blessings.

We cut into our pork chops and began to eat. We both agreed the pork turned out pretty tender and we both liked the coating on these pork chops.

I’m not crazy about black pepper and thought the recipe could have used a little less, on the other hand, Brad likes pepper and he thought it could have used a little more.

When we were finished eating, Brad and I decided we would definitely like having this dish again. We also decided this coating could also be used on chicken.

I definitely nailed it, and this recipe is headed to my self-made cookbook.

Sarah Condley is an amateur baker and chef who is compiling a cookbook of her favorite recipes.