Today was supposed to be an outdoorsy day for me. I wanted to be outside in the garden getting it ready for winter, but it was just so rainy and bitterly cold today that I stayed inside cleaning and cooking. The boys were away hiking and fishing and came back early after a miserable day. When they announced that they were coming back early and hungry I wanted to put together some filling comfort food quickly.

I threw together some farfalle (bowtie) pasta with browned sausage meat and browned ground beef and basil tomato sauce with lots of cheese to fill them up.

I have lots of leftover bananas (and they are a little tired of my banana bread) and loads of leftover bread to use up – including raisin bread. For an easy comfort food dessert I made a Banana Raisin Bread Pudding. I modified a recipe from Kraft foods, with a little bit of advice from Martha Stewart (she has a recipe as well).

Lightly grease or spray a 9″ by 13″ baking dish. Cube enough bread to loosely fill the dish. For this dish, if you can use brioche bread or buns, and raisin bread – but if you don’t have any of those – that’s OK – white bread will do, it’s just not quite as fancy. I slice the bread into 1 to 1 1/2 inch cubes. I used 6 slices of raisin bread, one large brioche hot dog bun, and half a loaf of sliced french loaf.

Whisk together:

2 1/2 cups milk

1 tsp vanilla

2 tbsp white sugar

4 eggs

1 box Instant Vanilla Pudding mix

Pour the mixture over the bread – making sure to stir to coat all of the bread pieces.

Sprinkle 1/2 cup raisins over the top

Slice 3 to 4 bananas and spread over the top

Bake for 35 minutes in Preheated 350 degree oven

The boys loved it – with Whipped Cream or Vanilla Ice Cream. It’s so easy, and I love that I don’t have to make it exactly the same way each time.