Happy Saturday morning, everyone! I am not quite sure, but I think Saturday morning is my favorite part of the traditional weekend. I feel like I have the entire weekend ahead of me – and I just love that feeling!

This morning mom was getting ready for our out of town guests that will be arriving in a couple of hours. In our house, that means one thing: banana pudding. I do not know why I wasn’t actually expecting to see a banana pudding when I came into the kitchen in search of coffee at 9 o’clock this morning – of course it would be there. Southern hospitality, in my family, includes a banana pudding for guests if nothing else! The best thing? Mom made me a mini-banana pudding for breakfast. This was such a treat, and a lot better than a bowl of cereal. (Perfectly enough, the banana pudding was already in my favorite cereal bowl!)

Do you need a recipe for banana pudding? If so, you want my grandmother’s recipe. Here it is:

Ingredients:

1/2 C sugar

1/3 C flour

dash of salt

3 egg yolks

2 cups milk (2 % works well)

1 tsp vanilla

35 Vanilla Wafers

5 ripe bananas, sliced

Directions:

mix 1/2 C sugar, flour and salt in top of a double boiler. Blend in 3 egg yolks and milk. Cook, uncovered, over boiling water, stirring constantly for 10 to 12 minutes or until thickened. Remove from heat, stir in vanilla.

Spread a small amount of the custard you just made on the bottom of a serving dish; cover with a layer of vanilla wafers and a layer of sliced bananas. Pour about 1/3 of the custard you have over the bananas. Continue to layer with wafers and more bananas, and custard, about 3 layers. Finish your serving dish with a layer of vanilla wafers.

Other recipes call for making a meringue, but as kids my sister and I never liked it – so my family stopped making banana pudding with meringue. If you do add a meringue on top, bake the banana pudding in an oven at 350 for 15 – 20 minutes, until the meringue turns lightly brown.

In other news, I went back to work on Thursday. It was so great to go back to work. I was even excited to pack a lunch on Thursday and it felt so great to sit in my office and eat my lunch around 12:30! Ah, the love of a routine. Can’t beat it sometimes.

Lunch on Thursday was a turkey sandwich with greens and dijon mustard on Arnold’s whole wheat sandwich thin. A snack bag of carrots, a few Chez its (they were so good. Just saying.) and my afternoon snack was a huge, great, macintosh apple. Perfect lunch, I thought!

Fear not, I will be doing some cooking this weekend – and I will keep you posted on what I’m making and where I’m finding the recipes (if I’m not creating them myself). Stay tuned and enjoy your weekend!