Good Morning, my lovelies! It has been a month of Sundays since I wrote a post here, hasn’t it? I can only plead my commitment to getting the current rewrite of my WIP done (aka “the edits that would not end”), and trying to keep everything on an even keel in the home, family, and day job.
But excuses aside, I want to share something really important with you today, to kick off another Southern Weekend. As a true child of the South, there is nothing more important to me than the cuisine of my homeland. Yankees don’t seem to care as much about food as we do – I have yet to hear about the citizens of Northern states running decades-long feuds over the proper ingredients of their favorite foods, but it is a common thing in the South. Don’t ever put a Carolinian and a Texan on the committee to plan a barbecue, for instance.
Now, I agree with some of the people who hold strong beliefs about proper preparation of Southern specialities. I believe that grits should never be instant, that cornbread dressing does not deserve to be called “stuffing” and crammed up a bird’s butt, and that green Key lime pie is an abomination before The Lord. These are nonnegotiable positions, and I do believe that they are mentioned in the King James Bible — right after Jesus decreed that egg salad sandwiches are the official reception food of the Methodist Church.
But I am not a Luddite. I will accept modern innovations, and one of my favorite new-fangled foodstuffs is instant pudding. You can take a package of instant pudding and add it to a cake, put it in a congealed salad, or any number of adventurous uses. And while my Grandma Holley made her nanner pudding the old fashioned way, with cornstarch and milk, and lots of time over a hot stove, I use instant pudding to make something that I think can hold its puddingly little head up with pride. Here’s my recipe for nature’s perfect food, Arabella’s Nanner Pudding:
1 package (8 oz) cream cheese, whipped up all fluffy
1 can Eagle brand sweetened condensed milk
1 package instant pudding (banana is best, but vanilla if its all you can get)
3 cups of real cold milk (use whole milk – don’t try to cut calories by using skim — if you’re on a diet, just eat the banana plain and forget about pudding)
1 tub (8 oz) of Cool Whip
3 Bananas (really ripe, but not gone over), sliced into coins
Vanilla Wafers to taste (I use about 3/4 of a box of Nilla brand)
Take your whipped cream cheese, and beat in the Eagle milk, pudding mix, & milk. Then carefully fold in about half of the Cool Whip, followed by the bananas and some of the vanilla wafers.
Get a pretty bowl and line it with vanilla wafers. This is kind of tricky – you may need to put in some wafers & hold them in place with pudding in stages until you fill up the bowl.
Let it sit in the fridge for a good couple of hours. Have the rest of the Cool Whip available for people to top their serving as desired. (But, for the love of all that is holy, DO NOT put the Cool Whip tub out on the table – put it in a proper bowl, like a civilized person.)
Now tell me that ain’t some fine nanner pudding!
Arabella Stokes 