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"Here, pass me the vanilla extract, please."
"Vanilla? For banana pudding, you don't use banana extract?"
"Nope, I only made that mistake once, they complained it didn't taste right, it has to be a vanilla pudding with bananas giving it the banana flavor."
"They like what they like, don't they."
"You got it, and they aren't shy about letting you know, either."
Linking up with Denise at Girlie On The Edge Blog, where she hosts Six Sentence Stories, and the cue is Extract.
Our Favorite Banana Pudding Recipe
1 c (240ml) sugar (or less if you don't like it super sweet)
4 T (60 ml) cornstarch
1/2 t (2ml) salt
2 c (480ml) whole milk
2 c (480ml) whole whipping cream
1 stick (120ml) butter
1 t (5ml) vanilla flavoring
bananas
vanilla wafer cookies (two bags because you will want to snack on some, or use some to keep kitchen snoops busy)
fresh grated nutmeg
Note: you can make this with any flavoring you like, and if you want chocolate pudding, use the full cup of sugar and 3 squares of baking chocolate. Also, if you have lots of people wanting to eat, double the recipe.
Mix the dry ingredients in the bottom of a heavy pot and pour in the cold milk and cream, and stir to get the cornstarch to dissolve. Drop in the butter and vanilla (or other flavoring, and chocolate if you want chocolate pudding) and put over medium low heat.
Here's the hard part -- use a spoon to stir pretty constantly so the butter (and chocolate if using it) gets incorporated and keep stirring until it gets thick enough to be pudding. This generally takes until your arm feels like it's going to fall off, so about an hour, maybe longer if it's being uncooperative. (I've been known to get tired and speed the process a little by increasing the heat a smidge, but be very, very careful to stir constantly if you do and if it starts to stick on the bottom at all, turn the heat down immediately.)
Once it is thick, let it cool while you layer cookies and sliced bananas in a pan. Spoon half of the pudding over the cookies/bananas, then do another layer, and top it all with fresh grated nutmeg and some crushed up cookies for looks.
Stick it in the fridge to set and then stand back when the appetites come.
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While Good Fences Around the World seems to have gone the way of the dodo bird, i still enjoy looking for and posting interesting fences, so i will!
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It's Angel Sammy's Poetry Day! This week's image and my poem:
I came abroad to learn about art,
now I can't say what is the best part,
taking in so much beauty each day
or watching artists paint as if it's child's play!
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Brian of Brian's Home hosts the Thankful Thursday Blog Hop. It's time to share something for which i am thankful.
Today i am thankful the employee at the shelter yesterday noticed right away one of the kittens in intake wasn't doing well (i hadn't gotten to the intake cages yet). It had spay surgery Monday and was bleeding internally, she rushed it to the vet and it's going to be all right.
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Today is:
Birthday of Osiris -- Ancient Egyptian Calendar (date approximate)
Festival for Luna -- Ancient Roman Calendar
Festival of Mania -- Ancient Roman Calendar (to placate the Manes, a day when the Mundus, the portal to the afterlife, is open and the dead are free to roam)
Flag Day -- Liberia
Flitting Appreciation Day -- another "holiday" with no particular reason except that someone who enjoys flitting around wanted to celebrate it
Gangara Fire Festival -- Atago Shrine, Ikeda City, Japan
Independence Day -- Ukraine(1991)
International Day Against Intolerance, Discrimination and Violence Based on Musical Preference, Lifestyle, and Dress Code -- sponsored by the Romanian Humanist Association and the Sophie Lancaster Foundation
International Strange Music Day -- as declared by strange musician and composer Patrick Grant
Knife Day -- internet generated, but how would we cook without them? today remember how much you do each day with a good kitchen knife.
National Flag Day -- Liberia
National Peach Pie Day
National Waffle Day -- Cornelius Swarthout patented the first waffle iron in the US on this day in 1869, so it is sometimes noted as National Waffle Iron Day
Pluto Demotion Day
St. Bartholomew's Day (Patron of bookbinders, butchers, cobblers, Florentine cheese merchants, Florentine salt merchants, leather workers,plasterers, shoemakers, tanners, trappers, whiteners; Armenia; Borgo Tossignano, Italy; Boves, Italy; Carpineto dell Nora, Italy; Civitella in Val di Chiana, Italy; Frankfurt am Main, Germany; Gambatesa, Italy; Gharghur, Malta; Lipari, Sicily, Italy; Maastricht, Netherlands; Magalang, Philippines; Plzen, Czech Republic; Potosí, Bolivia; Salzano, Italy; Trino, Italy; against nervous diseases, neurological diseases, and twitching) related observance
Schaferlauf -- Markgroeningen, Germany (Festival to honor St. Bartholomew, Patron of Herdsmen, on this day or the weekend after; includes traditional barefoot race by children of active shepherds and water carrying contests; also now has a music festival)
Wayzgoose -- a traditional day for master printers to throw an end-of-summer party for his workmen
St. Owen of Rouen's Day (Patron of the deaf; against deafness)
Vesuvius Day -- anniversary of 79CE eruption which destroyed Pompeii, Stabiae, and Herculaneum
Waratambar -- New Ireland Province, Papua New Guinea (a native thanksgiving)
William Wilberforce Day -- Wilberforce University, Wilberforce, OH, US (birth anniversary of founder, in 1759)
Birthday's Today:
Rupert Grint, 1988
Chad Michael Murray, 1981
Marlee Matlin, 1965
Reggie Miller, 1965
Cal Ripken, Jr., 1962
Craig Kilborn, 1962
Steve Guttenberg, 1958
Stephen Fry, 1957
Oscar Hijuelos, 1951
Michael Richards, 1950
Gregory Bruce Jarvis, 1944
Mason Williams, 1938
Yasser Arafat, 1929
Hal Smith, 1916
Jorge Luis Borges, 1899
Duke Paoa Kahanamoku, 1890
Daniel Gooch, 1816
William Wilberforce, 1759
Debuting/Premiering Today:
"The Facts of Life"(TV), 1979
Today in History:
The eruption of Mt. Vesuvius buries Pompeii and Herculaneum, 15,000 die, 79
The Visigoths under Aleric begin to pillage Rome, 410
King John of England, a/k/a Humpty Dumpty for having to issue the first Magna Carta, marries Isabella of Angoileme, 1200
Six thousand Jews are killed in Mainz after being blamed for the bubonic plague, 1349
The printing of the Gutenberg Bible is completed, 1456
The first English convoy lands at Surat, India, 1608
Calcutta, India is founded, 1690
British troops invade Washington, D.C. and burn down the White House and several other buildings, 1814
Charles Darwin is asked to travel on HMS Beagle, 1831
The Panic of 1857 begins, touching off one of the most severe economic crises in US history (Which just goes to show you, the more things change, the more they stay the same), 1857
Cornelius Swarthout patents the waffle iron, 1869
The Wolseley Expedition reaches Manitoba to end the Red River
Rebellion, 1870
Captain Matthew Webb became first person to swim English Channel, 1875
Thomas Edison patents the motion picture camera, 1891
Workers start pouring concrete for the Panama Canal, 1909
Amelia Earhart becomes the first woman to fly non-stop across the North American continent, 1932
The treaty creating NATO goes into effect, 1949
France explodes its first hydrogen bomb, thus becoming the world's fifth nuclear power, 1968
Voyager 2 (launched 1977) reaches Neptune, 1989
Mikhail Gorbachev resigns as head of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, 1991
The first RFID human implantation is tested in the UK, 1998
Argon fluorohydride, the first Argon compound ever known, is discovered at the University of Helsinki, 2000
The International Astronomical Union (IAU) redefines the term "planet" such that Pluto is considered a Dwarf Planet, 2006
The 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s 'I Have A Dream' speech is commemorated in the U.S., 2013
Astronomers announce the discovery of an earth-like planet named Proxima b orbiting star Proxima Centauri, 2016
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro orders the army to help contain fires in the Amazon after widespread environmental destruction, wildlife loss and international criticism, 2019
US adventurer Victor Vescovo is the first person to visit the deepest point of every ocean when he reaches Molloy Hole, in the Arctic, 2019
British-Belgian teen Mack Rutherford, age 17, becomes the youngest person to fly solo around the world, landing at Sofia, Bulgaria, after a five-month journey across 52 countries, 2022