Broccoli Salad

Here’s a delicious recipe for broccoli salad that appears every year at family gatherings. It’s good for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and is a nice chilled addition to predominantly warm meals. If you're veggie, simply leave out the bacon or use a bacon substitute. Either works.

Broccoli Salad 

Ingredients:
3 cups fresh broccoli, broken into small pieces
1/2 cup red onion, chopped
1 cup sunflower seeds
8 slices cooked turkey bacon
1 cup raisins
1 cup fat free mayo (or miracle whip light)
1/2 cup sugar (or splenda baking sugar)
2 tbsp white vinegar

Directions:
Mix together and allow to set in refrigerator about 1 hour for better flavor. Serve chilled.

See how easy that was? Enjoy.

Deviled Eggs

Deviled eggs are a yummy, healthy snack. My Gram makes addictive ones. She claims, as many of my kitchen-talented relatives do, that they’re easy and there really ‘is no recipe’. Which is true, in a way. You have to do it to your own taste. But here’s a base to start from:

Deviled Eggs 

Ingredients:
10 eggs
4 yolks
Miracle Whip Light
Organic Yellow Mustard
Salt and pepper.
Optional- paprika and/or olives

Directions:
Hard boil your eggs.* (Gram says the peel comes off easier if you use an egg cooker to hard boil them. The steam helps. But either way works fine.) Put them in the refrigerator until cool.

Peel the eggs and slice them lengthwise. Drop the yolks in a mixing bowl. Set the egg halves to the side on a plate or in a tupperware container.

Mash the yolks with a fork until there are no large lumps. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Scoop 1 large spoonful (~1 tbsp) mustard into the mixing bowl and mash it around with the fork until well mixed.

Scoop 4 large spoonfuls (~4 tbsp) light miracle whip into the mixing bowl and mash it around with the fork until the mixture is smooth, but not too thin.

Taste. If you want more of anything so far, now’s the time to add it. As Gram says, “You can always add more, but you can’t take away.”

When you’re satisfied, fill the half eggs with a generous spoonful of the yolk mixture.

Gram says you can use a melon scooper or a small ice cream scooper if you want them to be ‘fancy’, but if you do that, you need to make the mixture a little thinner.

Optional- Slice pimento filled olives for decoration and/or sprinkle (carefully) a tiny amount of paprika over the tops of the eggs.

Set in refrigerator at least 1 hour. Eggs keep in the fridge up to 4 days without spoiling.

Enjoy!

Gram's Banana Pudding

Nothing brings to mind memories of childhood comfort for me quite like my grandmother’s banana pudding. It’s simple, delicious, addictive, and (shock of shocks!) mostly healthy. Unfortunately, it’s also always been unreasonably difficult to replicate for some reason. Try as I might, given her list of instructions and ingredients, I still could not achieve the level of ambrosia that occurs in her version of this “easy” dish.

So this time, we did it together, and I wrote down everything she did. It came out wonderfully and disappeared within seconds.

Gram's Banana Pudding (sometimes called Nanner Puddin’) 

What you need:

2.5 qt Corningware bowl* (It doesn’t have to be this brand. But it does have to be this big and it needs to have a flat bottom.)
hand mixer
mixing bowl
spatula 

Ingredients:

Sugar Free JELLO Vanilla Pudding mix (1.5oz/42g)
2 cups cold, fat-free milk* (If making a larger portion or using a larger pudding mix box, always use 1 less cup of milk than the package instructions direct.)
4-6 bananas, barely spotted* (For the tested recipe we used 4, but they differ in size and some folks like more than others.)
1 box Reduced Fat Nilla Wafers* (Gram says if you don’t mind the extra calories and sugar, you should replace these with Pepperidge Farm Chessmen and use the same as instructed.)
1 14 oz can fat free sweetened condensed milk
1 8 oz container of Cool Whip Free

Directions:
Pour milk into a mixing bowl and sprinkle in the package of pudding mix. Stir with a hand mixer until well blended, then add the whole can of sweetened condensed milk. 

Mix until “just a little thick”.

Fold the cool whip in with a spatula until you can no longer see any dark yellow streaks in the mix.

Now, for the prep. In the corningware bowl (or whatever appropriately sized serving bowl you’ve chosen), put down a layer of nilla wafers.

Slice bananas into ~1/2 in thick slices. 1 layer of those on top of the wafers.

Now pour 1/3 of the pudding mix on top of that.

Repeat, for two more layers, with nilla wafers first, then banana slices, then the next third of pudding.

Repeat again. 

You’re done! Now simply place the lid of the corningware bowl (or cover with clingwrap) and put into your refrigerator.

Allow the pudding to set for at least 2 hours and a max of 2 days. How long you let it set depends on how much you like the pudding set, and also has an effect on how much the flavors will have blended and ripened together. I prefer 8-12 hours for the perfect mouth-feel and comfort-taste.

Serve generously.

Thanks, Gram.

The philosophy of HG.

I will make you a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

I will hope that someday you might want to make me a peanut butter and jelly sandwich as well.

But I will not make the peanut butter and jelly sandwich for you because I expect you to make me one.

I will not make you a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for money.

I will not make you a peanut butter and jelly sandwich if you do not want me to make you one.

If you are allergic to peanuts, I will make you a non-peanut product peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

I will not tell you that you are going to hell for not eating my peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

If you like just jelly, that’s fine. If you like just peanut butter, more power to you!

Jam, marmalade, almond butter, sunflower seed butter. Choose your variety and I will endeavor to oblige. Your preference may teach me a whole new tasty facet of sandwich making.

I will not combine either jelly or peanut butter with the state.

I will use organic peanut butter without complaint.

I will have an indefinite amount of both peanut butter and jelly and if you ever want either or both, know that I am always willing to share them with you.