Dessert, Anyone?

Hey there, You All,

Isn't it wonderful when you can get up to clean dishes without doing a lot of the work? No, little Brownies who cleaned house in the childhood fairy tales did not clean them. Instead, I had two dinner guests and an automatic dishwasher that did the job.

Yes, we had friends over to have supper with us last evening and we sat around and just talked for about two and a half hours following supper. We usually play dominoes after eating, but we continued our supper conversation on into the evening, about first one thing and another.

The friends who came over are two couples, Mark and Allie, and Gene and Judy and her mom,Marian. I know you have already read how I take Marian out for lunch fairly often. She will be 90 in about a week or so. So we had a very congenial group of seven people eating supper together.

I had made a couple of large bowls of a pasta dish, made up of hot cooked macaroni, mixed together with hot spaghetti sauce, some chopped up cooked pork tenderloin, and topped with grated cheeses (Mexican 4 cheeses found in packages at grocery store) then placed into the oven until cheese is thoroughly melted. (When we started serving, Gene asked,"Who are the other 7 people who are going to be eating with us?")

I had also made a big plate of deviled eggs, and Judy brought a pan of freshly cooked beets, and prepared at my home a pan of tender crisp zucchini. She had sliced the zucchini into small chunks, put two tablespoons of olive oil into the pan, along with a large sweet onion which she caramelized over high heat, then added the zucchini and kept it stirred until cooked just tender crisp. It was delicious!

To accompany the pasta dish, I had toasted some garlic bread, and Voila`, we had supper.

Following supper,Mark and Gene took the second bowl of pasta to a nearby Samaritan House where homeless people live. While we ladies waited, we cleaned up the dishes, and just talked and laughed, having a great time.

When the guys came back, I took out the dessert which I had prepared 24 hours previously. (see picture at top of post) This dessert is called "Chocolate Eclair" and is quite delicious. It is also a favorite of my grandson, Daniel. The first time I ate it was at the home of my daughter, Carol. She always prepares it for Daniel when she knows he will be coming home for a visit. I served the Chocolate Eclair with fresh strawberries to accompany it.

Needless to say, when we got through with the dessert a little bit later, only a small amount of it remained. It can be safely eaten by diabetics, because I used sugar free ingredients in most of it. For those of you who would like the recipe, here it is (courtesy of Carol).

Ingredients:

2 small pkgs of sugar free vanilla instant pudding

3 cups cold milk (low fat)

1- 8 oz container of cool whip (sugar free)

1 container reduced sugar fudge cake frosting (heat frosting in container for 30 seconds in microwave and stir to thoroughly mix)

box chocolate graham crackers

Mix together instant pudding, milk, then add thawed cool whip. Place layer of grahams in serving dish, add layer of pudding/cool whip mixture, another layer of grahams,layer of frosting. If you wish to use a 9x13 glass dish to serve it in, stop there. If you wish to use a compote, as I did, continue with your layering until your cool whip mixture and fudge frosting are used up, and end with a few crumbs of graham crackers on top of last layer of fudge. Yum, yum.

(The compote dish came from Wal-mart, really inexpensive)

(see picture at top)

A wonderful time was had by all, and after spending some time on the computer, I went to bed, knowing my kitchen wouldn't be a living nightmare when I got up this morning.

That is all from Blabbin' Grammy today - Hope you all have a wonderful day, and God Bless each of you and yours. Bye for now.