Foods of Durham Past: Pork Chops with Peaches

I loved helping with dinner when we had pork chops. My job was fun and simple: put the pork chops in the Shake 'n Bake baggie and "shake" to coat the meat with the yummy crumbs. And then Mom usually had me pour some of the remaining crumbs on top of the pork chops.

After I left my parents house, I learned that some people (even non-Jewish people) are weird about pork. I don't know whether it was unfamiliar to them or what, but for some reason I got the impression that it was a "bad" food for them. Maybe they were afraid of the way it was cooked, I don't know. Mom made pork pretty often. On Sundays, she would sometimes roast a big pork loin, but mostly I remember the Shake 'n Bake pork chops.

The Shake 'n Bake pork chops were more kid friendly I think. Anything that's breaded more closely resembles a chicken nugget, therefore, a kid is more likely to be comfortable with it. The peach portion here was the grown up part. I don't think I ever had a peach atop my pork, nor did Carter or Lisa. I distinctly remember watching these through the oven door, wondering what would happen to that peach during baking time. Not much, really.

What did happen during baking time was the crumbs that fell off the pork chops got all burnt and crispy. That was my dad's favorite part. After dinner he would walk over to the stovetop where the baking sheet was and scrape up all the remaining burnt bits with his fork and eat it, right there in the kitchen. Sometimes he would preemptively scrape them off the sheet and onto his plate in a big, burnt crumb pile as part of his dinner.

I should thank Lisa for giving me the box of Shake 'n Bake which not only inspired, but partly funded this post.

Would I eat it again? Sure. I'd probably scrape the peach off and eat it separately though.
Would I make it again? Yeah, but only for kids, my grown up tastes prefer the pork roast.
Would I feed it to friends? My little kid friends.