ROCKLAND, Maine — You'll need:
one onion, diced (about a cup)
1/2 cup diced celery (about 2 stalks)
2 carrots, peeled and diced
1 TB melted butter (or a bit more!)
1 lb ground, bulk sausage (Lynn used Jimmy Dean's Sage Sausage)
bread (Lynn used day old Italian bread, biscuits, ends of bread loaves to fill up a bowl of bread), torn up
2 apples, diced (your preference, Lynn used Macintosh!) and peeled if you prefer
Salt and Pepper
1 cup boiling water
Method of Preparation:
Saute onion, celery and carrots in melted butter in large sauté pan. Once the vegetables are slightly translucent, add your ground sausage. (Lynn notes that there are so many flavors of ground sausage, you can really get creative here!) Allow this all to cook together and be sure the sausage is fully cooked through, but not browned. Don't drain the fat! Add two chopped apples. Don't overcook the mixture with the apples added; sauté lightly for about two minutes. Add Salt and Pepper to taste. This creates the base for your stuffing.
Add veggies/sausage mixture in to your bowl of ripped up bread. Mix together thoroughly, and moisten with about a cup of boiling water, adding the water in small amounts, and mixing as you go. Keep mixing -- you don't want there to be big hunks of bread, and the boiling water will help break it down. The stuffing is ready to go now and can be used for roast chicken or roast turkey. Lynn is using the stuffing to prepare Baked Stuffed Pork Chops. She has some thick-cut chops, positions them on a baking sheet, and generously spoons the stuffing right over the top of the chops. Mound it right up! Bake the pork chops at 425 degrees for 20 to 30 minutes. The stuffing on the top will be crunchy and brown. Any leftover stuffing can be frozen and used for another dish!