Recipes & Food Styling

A Maple-Forward Menu for Arbor Day, or ANY day!

Arbor Day Dinner to-night! Maple Manhattans with black walnut bitters! Maple-Glazed Brussel Sprouts! Maple-roasted pork! Forest Reverie Butter Board with maple-roasted grapes! Served on my mom’s gorgeous Homer Laughlin maple leaf dishes!

A maple-forward menu is lovely for Arbor Day – or ANY day! After this meal, we watched one of our favorite movies: “It’s Arbor Day, Charlie Brown!”

For Arbor Day, you don’t have to plant a tree to celebrate. Mulch trees (they grow so much better with some mulch), watch a movie, or make a special meal like this!  

Maple-Glazed Pork Chops

4 bone-in pork chops, 3/4-inch thick    
1 tablespoon butter + 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
1 cup packed brown sugar
1 cup maple syrup
2 teaspoons fresh thyme
1 tablespoon hot Hungarian paprika
1/4 teaspoon pink Himalayan sea salt

Preheat the oven to 350ºF.

In a frying pan over medium-high heat, melt the butter and heat the olive oil. Add the pork chops, and sear them on both sides and on the edges, about 2 minutes on each side.

Remove the pork chops from the frying pan and arrange them in a Dutch oven or another heavy-bottomed baking dish. Top the pork chops with the sugar, syrup, thyme paprika, and salt, spreading evenly over the top of the pork chops.

Bake until the pork chops are cooked all the way through and the inside is white, about 40-45 minutes. Each pork chop should have an internal temperature of 145º.

When the pork chops are done, remove them from the oven and set them on the countertop until they are cool enough to plate.