Chocolate Yumminess

My in-laws are coming for lunch today. 

Although as a general rule we don't have dessert with meals at my house, when I have people over I feel the need to serve something sweet.  I tend to make the same two or three things - which is crazy since there are hundreds of recipes I'd like to try. 

One of my (sort of) New Year's resolutions was to try to use up things that I have in my house before I buy more of whatever - yarn, books, projects, food, etc.  It's not completely a resolution - I'm not going to go wacko about it, but I am trying to make an effort to reduce the household footprint.  I have no grand and glorious reason - it just seems like we have a lot of 'stuff' and we continue to accumulate more.

You're probably wondering what these things have to do with each other. 

At Thanksgiving David's aunt brought pies.  She brought Reddi-whip, and Cool Whip.  We all had the Reddi-whip with our pies, and I tossed the unopened container of Cool Whip in the freezer.

My sister, for whom this blog is written, loves to can food.  Some time ago she gave me a jar of spiced cherries.  I've never really known what I should do with them.  It seemed like I should use them for something special - but what?

One of my children's favorite desserts when they were growing up was something we (lovingly) called 'Plop'.  It sounds gross, but is really quite delicious.  It's a package of instant pudding (made up to eat) and a container of Cool Whip.  You mix the two items together and they make a 'plop' sound when you put it in a bowl. 

Ah hah!  you say.  Finally! 

So I took the spiced cherries, drained them (saving the juice).  Added enough milk to the cherry juice to make the 2 cups required.  Mixed up the instant pudding, waited for it to set, mixed in the Cool Whip, cut up the cherries, and mixed it all together. 

Yum Yum Yum.  (Yes of course I had to taste it to make sure it was okay :)  )

The little bit of spiciness from the cherry juice upped the flavor just enough.  I can't wait for lunch!