Fanfares for Southern Cooking

The banana pudding ended up on the table of the Southern potluck today. Man, I don't care how unhealthy it is, but I just love Southern food, it is made out of deliciousness and sweet intentions to make people happy. And I sure got happy. On the negative note, I have tomorrow a health screening, where my cholesterol will be checked, and I am not expecting to score as well as I would have before the potluck. And on the other hand, I don't really even care, since I got my belly full of yummies, and that's when I forget the worries. Hah!

I am kinda perfectionist, and it doesn't matter much what is being measured, I would like to be the best possible what ever at any given situation. But the cholesterol... yeah, I made peace with myself before I attacked the crispy chicken, corn casserole, sweet potatoes and Dorito salad. I had never even heard of such, but it was so good, and I will be finding out how to make some myself, maybe I will share the secrets with you too. So you will have to learn to be more forgiving for yourself too, life is too short to worry about the comfort food.

The banana pudding got thumbs up, but I personally think it was quite sweet, and maybe the problem was me substituting the milk to almond milk with vanilla flavor. The pudding had lots of vanilla in it, but that is what I had, and thought that it had to do, it just adds sweetness to it. And maybe unsweetened condensed milk would allow you to add sweetness to your own liking, but I didn't want to risk it with too many changes, since I am no expert with such things. Either way people seemed to like it, I just personally would prefer less sweetness. So if you like less sweet stuff, you might want to consider regular milk and regular condensed milk.

My work, still trying to figure out if I can
continue while RV'ing

But I have gotten for some reason really into trying to figure out RV friendly cooking, which basically just means, easy, no mess stuff, and I will probably start more often blogging about the ones that were successful, and worthy of blogging. Right now we just are chilling out and waiting for dinner to cook. Meanwhile I will try to find out some recipes, that I desperately want to learn, not necessarily cause they'd be RV friendly, but cause they are delicious.

No Bake Banana Pudding

My quest to make the worlds best banana bread was sabotaged by my DH, hungry hubbies can be devastating for a girls baking plans. But I decided to post another recipe that I talked about, banana pudding that does not need baking, and to be honest, since I am not native, I had actually no idea that it would be ever even baked, but this is way faster, and also in a small space of RV will not create too much heat. The recipe that I used was found online, and it was for 20 servings, and I made some changes for it. Maybe I shouldn't have, since I am not used to making banana pudding, but I kinda ran out of the pudding mixture before I had even one third of the bananas used. So my version probably has much more pudding than what you all who know more about the matter would prefer. So maybe renaming the dish would be in place... Some Bananas in Pudding?

No bake banana pudding

I will post the recipe as I should have followed it, but will make notes about the changes to the recipe. This recipe comes together so fast, and especially if you would be RV'ing too, you would appreciate the fact it it takes very little dishes. I love easy, no mess baking and cooking. I prefer recipes that require nothing but throwing whole things out of fridge straight into the pot and get heated. This is one of those, or at least very close to one of them. All dishes to wash that I had were small cutting board, knife, measuring cup and measuring spoon, spatula, beaters and bowl. And next time I don't even need cutting board, bananas are easy to cut in your hand, as long as you use regular knife that you would use with fork. No trips to ER, especially if you're RV'ing. But let's get to business:

Essentials, minus the condensed milk, ooops! 

No Bake Banana Pudding

Ingredients

1 (5 ounce) package instant vanilla pudding mix

2 cups cold milk (I used vanilla flavored almond milk)

1 (14 ounce) can sweetened condensed milk

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

1 (12 ounce) container frozen whipped topping, thawed

1 (16 ounce) package vanilla wafers (I didn't use quite all of these)

14 bananas sliced (I only used 4 to 5, don't ask, it is still delicious!)

Just to add here a note I got from one of my glass friends, she thought that there had been typo in the original recipe, that 14 bananas just sounds way too much, she thinks that 4 sounds more about right. Yay me, accidentally might have gotten it right. :D

Directions:

In a large mixing bowl, beat the pudding and cold milk for 2 minutes. Mix in condensed milk until smooth. Stir in vanilla and fold in whipped topping. Layer wafers, bananas and pudding mixture into the glass serving bowl. Chill until serving.

I either didn't put thick enough slices of bananas, or I didn't overlap them, or I put too much pudding mixture, either way, I am pretty sure it will be quite delicious, at least what I licked from the spatula was yummy! One more victory to my RV cookbook! I am pretty stoked and can't wait until tomorrow to see what my coworkers will say, I am no expert in any Southern foods, and they are, so this will be quite a test for me. The good thing is that they are probably not expecting much from my Southern cooking, but I hope they will be pleasantly surprised. Even though it is missing most of its bananas. I ain't telling if you won't.

Well, the good thing about not using as many bananas as the recipe called for is, I will now have enough bananas to make my banana bread, assuming that Lee will leave them alone. Wish me luck!