That ain’t my grandmother’s banana pudding — BUT it is!

These cute little jelly jars make the perfect containers for this rich banana pudding.

My grandmother always made the best homemade banana pudding and she still could if she wanted to. She just turned 97 in May and is still occasionally cooking up things in her kitchen. Her banana pudding was always from scratch. She would get out all her ingredients, slice her bananas and make a rich, sweet, homemade custard to layer between the bananas and vanilla wafers and then top it with a fluffy meringue and brown it just the right amount in the oven. We could hardly wait for it to be chilled so we could dig into a big bowl of the pudding.

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Ok, so smoked salmon on a potato chip — who would have imagined a quick little appetizer!

I had these little apps at a friends house a couple of years ago. It’s such a weird idea to me to put something like smoked salmon on a potato chip. I used smoked salmon in other things that I garnish with caviar, boiled chopped eggs, red onion and capers but NEVER potato chips.

On an afternoon’s sailing trip that my daughter, Alexis and I and my twin sister and her son took in Charleston last Labor day I packed this appetizer in a small softsided cooler that I put in my suitcase because I knew we would take this out on the boat. After shopping at a local gourmet grocery, Caviar & Bananas for some cheeses, pates, sausages, breads, and wines, which they delivered to our boat, our smoked salmon on potato chips joined this array of scrumptious food for the day’s outing.

We had rented this 49 foot sail boat just for the four of us and we actually had a stewardess who waited on us. We didn’t expect to be waited on but after all the food was delivered to the boat, she organized everything and after we set sail (hey, sounds like sailor talk, huh), she came up (two bedrooms and two baths plus full kitchen below) to see what we wanted to drink and then she started arranging small plates of food to bring up for us to eat. This was a fantastic lunch and she prepared the little chip and salmon thing for us and it was a perfect accompaniment to all the other goodies along with champagne and wine. We offered to share with them but, of course, they refused, but did say they would be glad to enjoy anything leftover after the trip. 

This is the perfect little appetizer that you can have in your refrigerator ready for any drop in company this summer. You can also use the cream cheese with chives spread that comes already made instead of making the cheese mixture from scratch. Kettle chips or some type of thick chip works best, although I have used Pringle chips.

These are so quick to throw together and I love my little trays I picked up at Hobby Lobby.

These lasted about a couple of minutes once I put them out.

Smoked Salmon Chip

1/4 c. parsley

3 oz. cream cheese

1/2 tsp. grated lemon peel

1 tsp. lemon juice

salt and pepper

36 whole potato chips

4 oz. smoked salmon

Process the parsley in a food processor until coarsely chopped. Add the cream cheese, lemon zest, juice and pinch of salt and pepper. Process until pale green and smooth. Scrape the cream cheese into a zip lock bag. Squeeze it down to one of the bottom corners of the bag and snip 1/4″ off the corner of the bag. Top each chip with 1-2 pieces of salmon, pipe on a dollop of the cream cheese, garnish with small parsley leaf.

**Note.  I put the cream cheese mixture on the cracker first and then topped with the salmon and then a parsley leaf. You can do it however you want. Also, I used Kettle Chips because they are a thicker chip. I have used Pringles before but they are pretty fragile.

I Saw this grill at the Austin Food and Wine Festival and knew I had to have it.

We were at the Austin Food and Wine festival back in April this year and one of the vendors was doing sausages on this grill. My husband drug me over to see it and I knew that  we just had to have this for our backyard cookouts.

Over Memorial Day weekend we used this several times. First we did these sausages and peppers. Then we cooked (my son and husband did all the cooking on this) some serranos and jalapenos that we did in a little chicken broth and soy sauce and then roasted them on this grill. Believe it or not I found out how to take the heat out of the jalapenos. The first night we did them we could hardly eat them because they were so hot. Then I tried something I had read online and it worked. (more about that later.)

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I just wanted something easy and light for dinner tonight.

 I love making anything with pasta  and seafood and we do get beautiful seafood here in Texas any time of the year. Scallops and pasta are a perfect combination for a light dinner and this recipe fits all my criteria for quick and easy. Today while shopping the seafood section of my favorite store, the scallops were screaming “buy me”. Originally I was going to do this recipe with shrimp but decided to give these little bay scallops a try since they were on sale.

The firely pasta recipe is one of Giada’s. I made 1/4 the amount of chili oil need and that was probably enough for 2 recipes.

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Baaah, says the goat before giving up her milk for this Strawberry Ice Cream.

I have never made ice cream before using goat’s milk. I do love goat cheese (try my Rosemary and the Goat cheese appetizer – that’s what our site is named after).

I hope everyone has a great Memorial Day weekend and to start it off right, try this strawberry ice cream and have your guest saying “not baaaaad”. We are doing a Mexican theme this year with pulled pork tacos with grilled pineapple, roasted Serrano and jalapeno peppers, tamale casserole, corn and black bean salad and a lot of other good things. This ice cream may be making an appearance. That is, if there is any left by Monday’s party.

Today when I decided to give the goat’s milk a try in my strawberry ice cream, I wasn’t really sure I was going to like the flavor of the milk. It turned out fantastic. I also used some evaporated milk and whipping cream to give the ice cream a little more dimension. I like the richness of the whipping cream but I love the faint hint of the goat’s milk. Of course the fresh strawberries just added to this great combination.

I used canned goat’s milk for this recipe. The next time I make this I want to try the goat’s milk I can get in the milk section of grocery.

My veggie chopper is the perfect chopper for strawberries.

Perfect size pieces with only about 6-7 pulls of the cord.

Goat Milk Strawberry Ice Cream

1 lb. carton of strawberries, chopped small

1 c. sugar (or half sugar, half Splenda

12 oz. can Goat’s Milk, chilled

5 oz. can evaporated milk, chilled

1/2 c. whipping cream

Chop the strawberries fine and mix with the one cup sugar. Refrigerator several hours until they have become juicy and kind of mushy. Mix the strawberry/sugar mixture with the goat’s milk, evaporated milk and whipping cream.  Put into ice cream maker and freeze until firm. Put into freezer container and freeze for a couple hours in freezer before serving.