My hometown is a city of restaurants, restaurants everywhere. While it can be fun, it also entices people out of our homes and away from our kitchens. This week our church honored our Administrative Professionals at a luncheon, but we opted out of the typical restaurant setting and went for a potluck picnic at the hospitable home of a family in our church. God gave us beautiful weather! Women of our church send side dishes and desserts that were varied, creative, colorful, and delicious. Requests for recipes and trips for seconds were a given! The menu included:

• Chicken & pork barbecue
• Green salad with cherries, apples, walnuts, and maple dressing
• Tri-color pasta salad with olives
• Macaroni Salad with a bunch of yummy mix ins
• Southwest Corn & Bean Salsa with tortilla chips
• Parmesan Baked Cauliflower
• Banana Salad (I’m going to give you this one … keep reading!)
• Chocolate Cake with white icing (They looked like roses!)
• Glazed Cream Cheese Lemon Pound Cake

I don’t have to tell you how amazing this menu was, but I want to tell you 10 things I love about cooking and sharing our own food with others.

10 Reasons to Cook & Share

1. We get tired of our own recipes (I never heard of banana salad!!)
2. Cooks motivate cooks
3. Home cooking generates conversation
4. Food we “own” brings us together
5. We ask for recipes … & that connects us
6. New dishes inspire us in homemaking
7. We appreciate our differences as people
8. Sharing is biblical & beneficial
9. Eating at home breeds familiarity
10. Cooking & sharing helps us know & be known

In our busy world of ordering out, fast food drive by’s, and microwaving in, there is a bounty of blessing to be discovered when we cook real food and share it with real people.

We’re peering over the edge into a new month. How could you make plans to “cook and share” in the weeks ahead?

Banana Salad by Donna

I knew Donna would make something wonderful. As if to make my point about cooking & sharing, she tells me she got this recipe from her mother-in-law, who got it from a dear family friend. Recipes do bind us together, don’t they? 

From Donna: The only thing about this salad is you really need to make eat the day you eat it and it’s not really good leftover … not that there will be any 🙂

• 2 eggs
• 3 T white vinegar
• 1/2 c white sugar
• 18 oz Cool Whip
• approximately 3 bananas
• small pkg crushed peanuts (see alternatives)

1. Beat 2 eggs and mix in 3 T vinegar and 1/2 cup sugar.
2. Cook over medium heat until thick, stirring constantly. Let it cool.
3. Combine cooled mixture with 18 oz cool whip (I probably just use the largest Light Cool Whip)
4. Slice a layer of bananas in the dish you want to serve in (I use an oval casserole dish).
5. Spread a layer of the mixture over the bananas, then keep repeating the layers.
6. End with cool whip mixture, and top with crushed peanuts.

CLICK TO Tweet & SHARE >  Banana salad http://wp.me/p2H4E4-1zJ When we cook & share it binds us together #FeedMeFriday