Not Yo' Mama's Banana Pudding...

A sassy version of the wrist wranglin' original...



Now this recipe has a story behind it. I have a good buddy by the name of Joe Gibbons. If I am talking about Joe - I mean Joe Gibbons, period. So Joe is a senior citizen, but by numbers alone (he often acts like a 35 year old.) Joe is a character - a little naughty at times, like most men, but funny - man is he funny. He has a story for everything and if you want to laugh even harder, you need to hang out with his friend Homer Collins. I love Joe and Homer. My life would've not been complete without meeting the two of them, nor the other people I met working at CoastLine Travel for those few years. They changed my life and my way of thinking completely and boy did we have a good time.

So Joe was often without a wife. It wasn't that he didn't have a wife, it was just that they didn't live together that much while I worked with Joe. I couldn't figure this out for the life of me, as Joe had all of the qualities that I think a man should possess. He was funny, he thought I was funny (this is the most important trait) and he liked to eat. In fact, Joe would even eat Mexican food over and over again in the same week - what a good man. We'd often talk, while we were eating lunch, about what we'd like to eat next!

Now, back to the real story - Joe, being without a wife, often missed having some dessert... what he really wanted were some pies - and this girl don't do pies! (Joe even propositioned me once to bake him pies for payment - one pie a week, brought in each Monday! As if!) So for Joe's birthday, I decided to make him another of his favorites - banana pudding. I made him this very recipe "Not Yo' Mama's Banana Pudding." I was so proud of it! I brought it in that morning to CoastLine, beaming like a bride, and after he had finished a bowl full of it, he said to me, "Gurl, this is a good dessert ... but it's not banana pudding." Well, I was fit to be tied! I have never in my whoooooole life had someone say something like that before, especially while still chewing! The next year, my competitive streak convinced me to make homemade banana pudding - the kind you stir on the stove forever, whip egg whites to make meringue and bake it in the oven to make the peaks golden - the whole bit! Now when I brought that version in, he had to pick his jaw up from the floor to taste it - and he told me it was some the best he ever had and that, girls, is a compliment from a man his age.

So here is "Not Yo' Mama's Banana Pudding"...

Ingredients:
2 bags Pepperidge Farm Chessmen Cookies (or vanilla wafers if you don't have time to run to the store!)
6 to 8 bananas (not green), sliced
2 cups milk
1 5oz. box French Vanilla Pudding
1 8oz. package cream cheese, softened
1 14oz. can sweetened condensed milk
1 12oz. container Cool Whip, thawed


Line bottom of a 13x9 inch dish with a bag of cookies and put sliced bananas on top. Blend milk with pudding mix well with electric beater. In a separate bowl, beat cream cheese and condensed milk until smooth, fold in Cool Whip - add top pudding mixture, stirring (not beating) until well blended. Pour mixture over cookies and bananas; cover with remaining cookies. Refrigerate. Gets better by the day!