About Nanna's Puddin
Momma Ruby’s Story
Mama Ruby worked hard all of her life. It wasn’t an easy life, raising us 8 kids alone, but she took good care of us. I always knew my mama loved me – but it wasn’t until I tried to make her banana pudding that I realized quite how MUCH she loved me.
Mama Ruby didn’t show her love with words but she sure fed it to us by the spoonful. The kitchen was her domain and for an extra special treat, she would make us banana pudding. REAL banana pudding. COOKED banana pudding. She’d prepare the pudding on the stove, slowly stirring the pot to make sure it didn’t burn. We would hang around the kitchen, savoring the aroma of vanilla and just waiting for her to take it off the heat. Real banana pudding requires patience and tender care, the kind of attention that only a mama can offer.
As a young boy, I had a very important job, one I took VERY seriously: I got to clean the pudding pot! This chore gave me so much pleasure and I had a system for cleaning the pot while getting to savor every last
spoonful of that mouth-watering pudding. I would scrape up the pot with the precision of a surgeon, cleaning every line, and making sure not to miss a lick. When I had finished, mama would always ask me how I liked the pudding, with a rhetorical smile.
When I was older and had moved out of the house, Mama would call to tell me she had prepared something special for me. She didn’t have to say, I knew exactly what it was. Lord, what I wouldn’t give for that phone call now! Mama Ruby is gone but her memory lives on with her famous homestyle banana pudding. I know now that there was love in every bite. At Nanna’s pudding, we carry on Mama Ruby’s legacy by sharing her love (and pudding) with you.
This is a pudding made the old-fashioned way – from scratch with real natural ingredients, patience, and tender loving care.
Anthony’s Quest
I love banana pudding. You might even say that I am a connoisseur of fine banana pudding. But it has taken me years of taste-tasting to finally become a master chef of the perfect banana pudding.
After Mama Ruby died, I found myself on a quest. I was looking to find that magical taste from my childhood. The creamy, sweet pudding with the just-right ratio of cookies and bananas. Mama’s pudding was engraved in my memory – the vanilla wafting from the kitchen, the way it felt so smooth in my mouth, the bright banana flavour bursting against the creaminess of the pudding.
Every time I picked up a menu, my eyes went right to the dessert section. Before ordering food, I would ask the server about their banana
pudding. “Was it cooked?” “Was it made from scratch?” What I was really asking was: “Is it as good as my Mama’s?” I must have tried a hundred banana puddings over the years but none compared to my memory of Mama Ruby’s pudding. Some were made from store-bought pudding mixes, others had an artificial banana flavour, some were too unappetizing to eat.
Finally, after yet another disappointing banana pudding experience, my wife said the words that changed everything: “Why don’t you just make it yourself?”
Of course, I had thought of that before, but I am no chef and Mama didn’t leave anyone her top-secret recipe. But the challenge had been raised and I was
determined to give it my best shot. That first night, I was in the kitchen until 3am. I had bought all the ingredients I remember Mama using: pure vanilla extract, evaporated milk, eggs, flour, sugar. I cooked the pudding on the stove, picturing Mama Ruby stirring it slowly, her mind daydreaming of the life she might have had.
The real test came in the morning. My wife tried the pudding and we shared it with some friends. They were all astonished. I was too. It was creamy and mouth-watering, that lick-the-bowl-clean kind of good. Somehow, Mama Ruby had come to me and showed me her secrets! This was the pudding I’d been dreaming of. The pudding that represented all of the best moments of my childhood. It was a bowl full of joy.
You’d think that my quest was over – but that was just the beginning. I cooked and I tinkered and I perfected the recipe. I shared banana pudding with my friends and co-workers. Everyone begged me for the recipe. I had more orders than I could keep up with and that’s when “Nanna’s Pudding” was born.
I want to share the real home-cooked taste of banana pudding so that you can experience it too. Maybe you have the memory of REAL banana pudding from your childhood or maybe you’ve never had the delicious opportunity. Either way, I decided to make it easy for you to serve old-fashioned banana pudding by saving you the time and effort of cooking the pudding yourself. A sweet memory of yesterday in every spoonful.