3 BBQ's in 3 Days- Day 1

With my due date fast approaching I am working hard to keep myself as busy as possible so that I don't drive myself crazy sitting around and wondering when our sweet baby girl is going to make her grand entrance.

My idea on how to do that during this long holiday weekend is to document our activities and more importantly our food consumption over the next 3 days.  We will be attending three different BBQ's this weekend and I am bringing different side dishes to each.  I will be sharing the recipes for the dishes I have prepared here.  Let's get started.

Day 1 

Today's BBQ was a traditional burgers and brats all American BBQ hosted by our good friends Kelly and John.  I made a fresh broccoli salad and a banana cream pie.  Before you go running for the hills I would like to mention that up until about a year ago I wouldn't come anywhere near anything that had broccoli in it.  This salad though is amazing and was one of the first things that I ever ate with broccoli in it that I actually liked.

Here is what you will need.

 (does anyone know why the broccoli looks white in this picture?  I swear it was green in real life.  I seriously need to take a photography class!)

Here's what you will need to do.  Prepare the following items and toss together in a medium size bowl.
* 3 to 4 heads of broccoli.  Use little to nothing of the steams.  You really only need the florets here.
* 1/2 cup of red onion
* 6-8 pieces of bacon (I use turkey bacon but I am sure regular bacon would be equally delicious)
* 1/2 cup of raisins
* 1/2 cup of sunflower seeds (I used dry roasted)

For the dressing mix together
* 1 cup of mayo
* 1/4 cup of sugar
* 2 tablespoons of vinegar (I used apple vinegar today b/c it was all I had)

Now pour the dressing over the dry ingredients and chill for at least 2 hours before serving.  Here is what you will end up with:

Thank you to my cousin Sally who was the one who introduced me to this recipe in the first place.  It is absolutely delicious and it gets rave reviews every time I make it.

For desert I made a quick and simple banana cream pie.  Here is what you will need:

Here is what you need to do.
For the crust:
Crush about a half of a box of vanilla wafers so that you end up with 1 1/2 cups of the crushed wafers
Melt 6 tablespoons of butter
Mix the crushed wafers and the melted butter together and put in a 9 inch pie dish.  (There is no need to grease the dish first).  Cook at 400 degrees for 7-8 minutes.

For the filling:
* 2 1/2 cups of cold milk
* 2 packages instant vanilla pudding
* 1/2 cup whip topping

Pour the milk in a bowl and whisk in the boxes of vanilla pudding.  Fold in the whipped topping. 

Once the pie crust has cooled layer the bottom of the crust with 1-2 bananas.  Pour in the pudding mixture.  Layer with 1- 1/2 cup of whipped topping.  Let cool for at least an hour.  Right before serving slice up another 1-2 bananas and layer on top.  So simple yet so delicious.

Come back tomorrow for round two.  Hint- we are attending a Mexican themed party.