Overland Park (KS) woman wins cooking contest — and $100,000 (Banana Ice Cream w/ peanut butter)

Lindsay Weiss of Overland Park is the grand prize winner of the Southern Living Cook-Off.

She was awarded $100,000 for her recipe Roasted Banana Ice Cream with Warm Peanut Butter Sauce, which is now featured on Southern Living magazine’s Web site, www.southernliving.com.

“My husband and I sat through the entire ceremony — two and a half hours — and when my name was called, I was in complete and utter shock,” said Weiss, who traveled to Birmingham, Ala., for the contest. “I was not expecting it at all.”

The mother of two created her recipe last spring when she was pregnant with her son, Alex, and had a strong craving for peanut butter and banana sandwiches.

Weiss and her husband expect to invest the money in their children’s college fund.

In addition to the grand prize, Weiss was also the winner in the dessert category, for which she won $10,000. She is donating that money to her favorite charity, Camp Quality KC, a summer camp for kids with terminal cancer.

I'd eat it, but it doesn't sound that great. I just pigged out over a few days on my hot fudge sauce and vanilla ice cream. Plus I looked at the recipe and it is too darn much work and you need an ice cream freezer. Mine broke and those White Mountain ones are expensive. I do adore homemade vanilla ice cream.

There are two odd things I learned to eat at home. One was to eat a banana and put a knifeful of peanut butter on each bite as you peel the skin down. I still like that for a snack. The other odd thing I always got teased about.

Popcorn in milk. Not just any old pop corn. My father used to air pop it by shaking it in a wire basket I don't know if you can still buy any more, maybe for camping, over a burner on the stove, then pour melted, real butter and sprinkle salt, fluffed with a spoon so it would be uniform to the popcorn in a large bowl (he had to pop at least 3 shakers full first). Then we stuck a handful in a mug or glass of cold milk and ate 'til we were full. Today I have one of those electric air poppers I use instead of the shaker. And I still eat it when I get hungry for it. I think living on the farm, sometimes there wasn't much to eat or farm chores didn't leave much time for cooking. There was always milk from the cow and popcorn which stores for a long time. I keep mine in the freezer.

I think you have to get conditioned to eating certain goofy things as a kid because I think I would go yuck as an adult if I'd never tried it before.

To this day, I don't like popcorn popped in oil or microwave pop corn. Theater popcorn where they used to drizzle real butter on the top wasn't too bad, but it was greasy on top and by the time you got halfway down, the butter was all gone.

I've been meaning to try a recipe for that poppycock type stuff.

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