Sweetness, with a bit of sour

I saw the most awful article from Focus on the Family's Citizen magazine, claiming that because only a minority of LGB people are taking advantage of the rights we have, we don't really want or need them anyway. Well, y'all know what I have to say about that, but I wrote something for Talk 2 Action anyway called "No, Really, We Just Want to Stay Married." I'm...oh, hell with it, I'm kind of proud of it! So please look!

The panda cam's down for the day! At least I have Pandas Unlimited and their wonderful pictures. Like this one.



If that's not enough sweetness for you, I've got more for this Recipe Saturday. Banana Split Cake! It comes from Kraft's Food and Family magazine. You can see the original here. Of course, the point is to sell extra Kraft products, but I do like those back-of-the-box recipes--they tend to be easy. I adapted this one liberally earlier this week. I did the "lighter" touches, like using fat free/sugar free pudding, and also used Organic Valley neufchatel cheese. ("Do you have organic Cool Whip, too?" L'Ailee asked. "Shut up," I replied, just as she would have.) But I also doctored it by making the topping chocolate and adding maraschino cherries. I can't wait to mix in slices of real cherries and top it with more when they're in season! Only a few weeks! I'm also thinking this might be good with the strawberry Cool Whip that comes out in the summer. So I've really made it mine. L'Ailee loved it crazy.

Banana Split Cake

1-1/2 cups graham cracker crumbs
1-1/4 cups sugar, divided
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, melted
2 pkg. (8 oz. each) neufchatel cheese, softened
1 can (20 oz.) crushed pineapple, drained
6 medium bananas, divided
2 cups cold milk
2 pkg. (4-serving size each) sugar-free, fat-free chocolate instant pudding mix
2 cups thawed Cool Whip topping, divided
1 cup chopped pecans
1 small jar maraschino cherries, drained

MIX crumbs, 1/4 cup sugar and butter; press firmly onto bottom of foil-lined 13x9-inch pan. Freeze 10 minutes.

BEAT cream cheese and remaining 1 cup sugar in bowl with electric mixer until well blended. Carefully spread cream cheese mixture over crust; top with pineapple. Slice 4 of the bananas; arrange over pineapple.

POUR milk into large bowl. Add dry pudding mixes. Beat with wire whisk 2 min. or until well blended. Stir in 1 cup whipped topping; spread over banana layer in pan. Top with remaining whipped topping; sprinkle with pecans. Refrigerate 5 hours. Just before serving, slice remaining 2 bananas; arrange over dessert. Top slices with one or two maraschino cherries.