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What better Elvis tribute than peanut butter and banana?

I just got back from Memphis and had a great time with my mom and our friends. I’ve always wanted to see Graceland because I have the same birthday as Elvis, Jan. 8.

We got to tour his mansion; it was a self-guided tour so I could take my time. I could picture Elvis’s mom making his favorite fried peanut-butter-and-banana sandwiches in the kitchen and him eating sweet potato pie and meatloaf at the dining room table.

His kitchen wasn’t fancy, just like a normal kitchen. There was a microwave and cast iron skillet and canisters.

When I got home from Memphis I wanted to make something that would be a salute to Elvis. And so I came up with the idea of peanut-butter-and-banana ice cream pie.

A word from Mom: Walking through Graceland was like stepping into a time capsule from the 1970s: green shag carpeting on the stairs — and the walls, the chrome lighting in the TV room, the orange and gold tones throughout the kitchen.

He had a list of things he always wanted stocked in the kitchen when he was home. The list contains things on my own list, things like tubes of biscuit dough and homemade brownies, things that made me think that no matter how famous Elvis was, he kept hold of his small-town roots.

This ice cream pie reflects that simplicity as well. It’s a tasty way to pay tribute to the King and cool off on a hot summer night.

Ÿ Jerome Gabriel, a seventh-grader, has been helping in the kitchen since he could hold a spoon. His mom, Deborah Pankey, is the Daily Herald Food Editor.

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From music to museums, Memphis rocks

After visiting Graceland in June, Jerome Gabriel concludes that Elvis’s mama must have used this cast iron skillet, still on display in the kitchen, to cook up her son’s favorite fried peanut-butter-and-banana sandwiches. Deborah Pankey
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