Spur of the Moment Dinner: Stuffed Pork Chops

I took inventory of what I had on hand for dinner tonight and then went searching through my Pinterest recipes - which, by the way, I have HUNDREDS of!!  I settled on a recipe for Stuffed Pork Chops which originally came from Recipes.com .  I was missing several of the ingredients that the recipe called for but figured that I could make substitutions that would work.  And WOW did they work!!  Dinner came out awesome.

The ingredients called for were:

• 4 pork loin rib chops, cut 1 1/4" thick
• 1/4 cup finely chopped onion
• 1/4 cup finely chopped celery
• 1 tbsp. margarine or butter
• 1/4 cup chopped dried apricots
• 2 tbsp. chopped pecans
• 1/4 tsp. dried sage leaves
• 1/4 tsp. pepper
• 20 Keebler Town House Original crackers
• 1/3 cup apricot spreadable fruit
• 1 tsp. Worcestershire sauce

I only had two chops, and they were a bit thinner than 1 1/4" - but, they would work.  I didn't have dried apricots - but I did have Sun-maid Fruit Bits. The only pecans that I had were left over from Christmas and were glazed.  I didn't have any Sage but had some fresh Rosemary.  And I didn't have any apricot spreadable fruit - but I had some locally made Apple Butter.

So I started out by trimming the fat from my chops and cutting a pocket in each.

Next, I finely chopped the onion and the celery - then cooked in a medium saucepan with the butter until tender.

I chopped the fruit bits and pecans.

I chopped up the fresh Rosemary and added it to the pecans along with the pepper.

I removed my onion mixture from the heat and stirred in the fruit, pecans, Rosemary and pepper. The crackers came next.  I put approx. 20 crackers into a zip-lock bag and crushed them coarsely.  The crackers were then mixed into the onion mixture too.  Ummmm - the smell at this point was wonderful!

I stuffed the pocket of each of my chops with the onion mixture and secured with toothpicks. The chops were then placed on a rack in a shallow roasting pan and baked, uncovered, at 375 degrees for 35 minutes.

While the chops were baking, I mixed 1/3 cup of Apple Butter and a teaspoon of Worcestershire Sauce.

When the chops were just about done, I spooned this mixture over the top of the chops and continued to cook for another five minutes.

I served the chops with some of the remaining stuffing on the side.  My husband loved it :)

Enjoy!!