Roommate Reunion, Yard Crawl, and Delicious Food: Part 1, Friday Night

I don't know how it has taken me SO long to blog about this, but last weekend I was able to have an absolutely fantastic time with friends, family, and good food!

For those who don't know about the Rt. 11 Yard Crawl, it is a 43 mile stretch of Rt. 11 that is basically turned into a GIANT yard sale!  It starts in our town of Stephens City (mile marker 307 on I81) and goes south to New Market (mile marker 264 on I81).  And it always takes place on the second Saturday in August.  Well, last year my parents came up for it, and now it has become a tradition.  So, they came up Thursday night in preparation for this wonderful event...

...but that's not all.  I also accidentally committed to that weekend to do a roommate reunion with the 3 wonderful ladies I lived with for my last two years of school.  It has been TOO long overdue, and this summer we finally got something together (it's tough since one of our lovely ladies is a missionary and lives on a completely different continent for most of the year)!  So on Friday night and Saturday morning two of the three arrived.  Unfortunately, a last minute emergency meant one of the girls couldn't make it... and we missed her dearly!

Claire was the first to arrive on Friday night, and while she had stopped for dinner on her way up from Chapel Hill, I had promised her a FABULOUS dessert.  So, inspired by this recipe, I made Banana Split Trifle.  Here is how I did it:

Ingredients:
1 yellow sheet cake, prepared from a mix and cut into small chunks
1 large box of pudding, prepared mixed with 8 ounces cream cheese
2-3 large bananas, cut in small slices
1 container cool whip
Chocolate Syrup
Strawberry topping for ice cream
Whole Maraschino cerries

In a trifle dish (or just a really big bowl if you're like me and don't own a trifle dish) start with a layer of cut up cake.  Then add a layer of pudding/cream cheese mix.  Next, layer on a sprinkling of bananas and a pretty drizzling of both chocolate syrup and strawberry topping.  Continue this until you run out of room in the bowl (which in my case was I believe 3 layers).  On the very top add a layer of cool whip, a pretty drizzling of chocolate syrup, and some cherries. 

Nice pretty drizzling, huh?

I got the bowl as a wedding gift and had NEVER used it!  Now I know it makes a perfect trifle bowl!

This dessert turned out REALLY yummy, but VERY sweet!  And you might want to have a lot of people to serve it to, or make a smaller portion, because it did get pretty mushy after the first night... but it was still yummy, just not as pretty!  Everyone really enjoyed it (thankfully no one hated bananas) and my dad even gave this endorsement (note: he doesn't really like bananas)... "This is really good.  I didn't even have to pick out the bananas!"  Thanks, dad! :)