What to do when someone gives you 3 loaves of Jimmy Johns bread

White elephant gifts are honestly my favorite part of Christmas. Because they're so stinkin random and useless.. usually.  So when I went to the DSP Ugly Sweater Party on Friday night, I was fully expecting to get an awesome white elephant gift in exchange for the one I was bringing (A 2011 desk calendar of crossword puzzles. I HATE crossword puzzles, sodoku is more my thing.)  As I went up to the Christmas tree to select a conspicuously wrapped white elephant gift, a particular one caught my eye as it looked like sticks of dynamite. "I choose you" I thought.

30 seconds later, I discover I am now the owner of 3 loaves of Jimmy Johns bread. "Touche", I thought. Touche.  Because in all actuality, what I had just received wasn't a terrible white elephant gift (as to be expected)  but actually something super awesome.  The only problematic thing was that... well, I had 3 whole loaves of bread and a girl can only eat so many sammiches before she explodes.  

The next day, over a sammich, I pondered what I would do with all of this bread.  It was on its way to getting gross, hard, and crumbly.  I contemplated waiting a couple of days until it could really do some damage and then use it join the LARPERS (Live Action Role Play-ers) on the quad.  ..... Bad idea, Sarah.  Then finally a better idea struck me:  Bread pudding, and lots of it. 

I use to make bread pudding with my grandpa all the time when I was younger and the recipe is practically ingrained into my body, sort of like some weird Avatar type thing.  Nonetheless, my grandma had given me a recipe for banana bread pudding a couple months ago, and I hadn't gotten around to using it so I decided to give it a look.

Easy enough.  So let's begin.  Ingredients: 

Cube the bread and make the liquid mixture:

Combine and add bananas:

Dish into muffin pans:

Bake at 375 for 35-40 minutes:

And voila! I decided against making a sauce for the top, because as my grandpa would always say... that's a direct insult to the bread pudding itself. 

Even after all this, I still had some leftover bread. Croutons?! Croutons. I had never made homemade croutons before, and actually... I don't really like croutons all that much (except for the crazy amazing ones at Ruby Tuesday's).  But you only live once.

Honestly, I had no idea what I was really doing with this but I figured it would be hard to mess up. I just combined olive oil, garlic powder, salt, and Italian seasoning... 

Popped it in the oven (375 for 7ish minutes)

And... oh hey, that's how they make those. Easy peasy. 

So, if you ever find yourself in a situation in which you have too much bread, these are just a couple of my suggestions to you. Although, I kind of regret not keeping a bread sword.  Maybe next time.