Vanilla Pudding with Bananas

Mom and I had lunch last week at the Stoveworks Restaurant in The Factory at Franklin. The Factory is an old stove plant and thus the name of the restaurant. The restaurant kind of looks as though it was once the worker's cafeteria. It's open to the main area of the factory and it has all kinds of old kitchen utensils hanging everywhere. It's another one of those "ladies' lunch" places I was telling you about in my mom's birthday post.

Mom always gets the "lunch pail" which is literally an old-fashioned tin pail with a bologna sandwich, a bag of chips and a cookie inside. How cute is that? They have the absolute best fruit tea. I had never heard of fruit tea until I moved to Tennessee. I've made it before since then, from taste, but I'll have to look for a real recipe. I just add tea to some orange and pineapple juice and call it fruit tea. I'm sure they do something different.

Anyway, mom had a sweet tooth that day and ordered the banana pudding. I, of course, had to taste it to see if it was fresh, 'sho nuff, it was. (I'm getting the lingo down, huh.) It was sooo good. It wasn't banana pudding like mom makes, but it was good just the same. It didn't have any cookies in it, they had just added slices of bananas here and there and topped it off with just a little whipped cream.

I told the waitress how exceptional it was and she said it came out of one of the old cookbooks still used. I had noticed when we arrived, they no longer sold the Recipes from Miss Daisy's which was always readily available for purchase at checkout. You know how we take for granted these things will always be there, so we put it off? I shouldn't have. Everyone who comes to visits always buys one, but not me....oh no. It's no where to be found down here now. (But I just purchased it off Amazon.) After my compliment, the waitress tells me to wait a minute and goes off to the kitchen. She comes back a few minutes later with a copy of the recipe. How sweet is that? They are just the best down here, I swear. When I took my sister-in-law there last year, she raved about the squash casserole and they told her to leave an envelope with her name on it and they'd mail it to her. I went back the following week and did just that. And they did, they mailed her a copy of the recipe. Don't you wish all places and people were so nice? I certainly do.

I've had this recipe in the car for a week and decided to give it a whirl. And here it is. It was goooooood. (This isn't from the Miss Daisy cookbook, and I forget what they said it was from--an earlier edition of some sort. I'll call tomorrow and let y'all know--wink)

Stoveworks' Vanilla Cream Pudding

• 1/2 C sugar
• 2 T cornstarch
• 1/4 t salt
• 2 C hot milk
• 2 egg yolks, slightly beaten
• 2 t butter
• 1 t vanilla
• 2 sliced bananas

Mix sugar, cornstarch and salt in saucepan. Gradually stir in milk. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly until mixture thickens and boils. Boil for 1 minute. Remove from heat. Gradually stir at least half of hot mixture into egg yolks. Then blend it back into the hot mixture in saucepan. Boil 1 minute more, stirring constantly. Remove form heat. Blend in butter and vanilla. Add sliced bananas. Serve warm or cold. I added whipped cream to the top. (And a cookie, which wasn't necessary and truly over the top.)