From Scratch

Today was my day off. I love days off. I get to sleep in, play with friends, and best of all cook. Most other days, I really don't have time to wash dishes, let alone, make some fancy kind of food after that. But today...

I went out to lunch and went grocery shopping on the way home. When I got back, I did the dishes and decided to make a banana pudding. Bananas were on sale at the store, so it just made sense, since in my brain there is nothing else you can do with that fruit. If I were in "The Land of Pre-Made, Ready-from-the-Box, Convenience" this would be a piece of cake, and I could whip up a delicious dessert in just a few minutes (well, maybe like 30 minutes or so). But, I live in a different country, where you can't find VanillaWaffers, CoolWhip, and Jell-O Pudding in the local grocery store. BUT I do have recipes for all of those necessary ingredients for banana pudding.

Oh Yes, that's right. First, I whipped up a batch of made-from-scratch cookies using a chocolate chip cookie recipe without adding the chocolate chips (oh, and just so you know, NO, sugar cookie dough is not available on the freezer isle). While those were baking, I started on the pudding. Milk, sugar, cornstarch, butter and vanilla. That's it. Just cook it the right way and it turns into pudding. It's great. I never knew pudding didn't come from a box! As the cookies and pudding are cooling (because you don't want to use hot ingredients in banana pudding because it turns the bananas black- made that mistake once. will never do it again) I attempted whipped cream to put on the top. I used my handy, dandy, new milk frother to wise the cream and sugar into a soft topping. It didn't work out quite as well as I had hoped, but that's probably because I wasn't patient enough to whip enough air into it to make it less liquidy. So, now, I had all of the things I needed to actually put the pudding together. Or so I thought. Then I remembered bananas. Easy enough to fix. Just slice them.

Phew. Safe. For those of you who don't know, a banana pudding is a dessert created by layering cookies, pudding, and bananas in a casserole-like fashion, then topped with whipped cream. I will let the flavors mellow tonight, and tomorrow, I will enjoy my magnificent creation. This whole process took probably around 3 hours.

That was so much fun, that I decided to make dinner (okay, the fun of it AND the hunger in my tummy helped me make the decision). I made stuffing. Again, not from a box. I took some old bread, toasted it, and cut it into cubes. In a frying pan, I browned some onions and added the bread cubes. All of that got mixed with one beaten egg and two cups of chicken broth. I cooked it for a few minutes on the stovetop, added a few spices, and enjoyed the simplicity (compared to the complexity of the previous dish).

While I am on the subject, I am still amazed at how easy some things are to make at home. When I lived in the States, I would have never thought of making my own flour tortilla shells from flour, oil and water! I thought you had to buy them at the store! Really! Looking back on it, there were some times when I was in college that I felt like I had NO food to eat. I bet that if I knew then what I know now, there would have been plenty of delicacies to enjoy.