We decided to make a Key Lime pie for Christmas dinner, because it is a dessert that everyone in the family will eat. And the good news is that making Key Lime pie is really easy, especially because we have been planning to make one for a long time, so we had all of the ingredients in the house. Of course, it has to be prepared the day before and properly chilled, so we made plans for Gretchen and K to put it together on Christmas Eve.
The wrapping of the Christmas presents at the kitchen table, however, went on *far* longer than we anticipated, so it was nearly four o'clock when I started snagging the supplies out of the pantry for a double-check. We make a gingersnap crust instead of a graham cracker crust, but we had the sealed bag of gingersnaps, which are among the most durable of cookies. We had cans of sweetened condensed milk. (Checks expiration date. All good.) We had a fresh lemon to zest. We had eggs. Lots of eggs.
And here was the bottle of Key Lime juice. Which had expired in January of 2021. Oh. Well, maybe it's still good. I unscrewed the cap and before I could think about removing the seal, liquid started sputtering out under pressure. This was not in any way a good sign.
So maybe I could get to the grocery store before it closed. Sadly, I arrived at Mariano's about ten minutes after they closed at four. Maybe Jewel was still open. I called Gretchen to advise her and she suggested Walmart as an alternative, checking the website and determining that they didn't close until six. But that was ok, because neither did Jewel.
In what was not a surprise, the spot on the shelf where the Key Lime juice would go was barren. There was plenty of lime and lemon juice available, but since all of *those* were loaded with sulfites, I can't have them due to allergies. Having anticipated this, I had been told that the juice of four lemons would probably do, so I bought five, and also three limes for good measure. (Roper family marked safe from scurvy.)
Did I mention that K has never made a Key Lime pie?
So the first step was to make the crust. Gretchen's knees were bothering her, so she was dealing with things at the kitchen table and letting K do the work at the countertop, which was a reasonable division of labor. Dad, meanwhile, had retired to his chair with a headache.
Did I mention that the food processor that we would normally use to make the crumbs for the crust had been missing since the kitchen renovation?
But, you know, if you put the cookies into a freezer bag and attack them with a rolling pin, you will eventually get crumbs. And that is what Gretchen set out to do. Meanwhile, I went into the library to look at the remaining packed up debris from the kitchen renovation in the hope of getting the food processor to materialize out of thin air.
"Check the bag on the amplifier," Gretchen said. "There are two bags. One is full of drone parts."
I looked at the bags. "There are two bags full of drone parts," I announced. On the other hand, I passed my math test by observing that there were *three* bags on top of the amplifier. And underneath a Halloween-themed apron, I found several items, including popsicle molds, a set of ice cream dishes that were supposed to go to Goodwill, an antique curling iron designed to be heated with the stove, an iron, the missing juicer, which was another thing that we really wanted to have right now, and the food processor.
I brought the bag into the kitchen just in time for Gretchen to finish crushing the cookies with the rolling pin. There was much rejoicing, because we were really starting to wonder where the food processor had vanished to and although it had turned up too late for this project, it would come in extremely handy in the future.
We had doubled the crust recipe, which meant that instead of five tablespoons of butter, we would need ten. Gretchen decided to round up and told K to use one-and-a-half sticks of butter. Something was lost in translation, because K melted *three* sticks of butter and added the cookie crumbs to them, making a gemisch that obviously contained *way* too much butter. Some of the excess butter was drained off into a separate dish and the remaining mix was pressed into the pie dish and baked to set it. More or less.
K then set out to separate the six egg yolks and add them to the condensed milk. Unfortunately, this is another thing that K hasn't done before, so she didn't realize that the best course was to separate the egg yolks far, far away from the dish with the rest of your ingredients and then add them. So after the first egg white hit the milk, Gretchen came over to help separate it as much as possible from the milk and then to proceed to separate the remaining eggs. We paused before adding the lemon and lime juice (K having zested lime and lemon while Gretchen juiced lemons and limes), because it was seriously getting to be time for dinner.
So Gretchen popped the frozen Trader Joe's mac and cheese into the oven to bake. The ham steaks were fried, and the frozen green beans microwaved. And the mac and cheese came out of the oven and looked really sad, even after mixing. It was decanted into another bowl, covered with leftover quesadilla cheese, and microwaved to melt everything together. After this, it looked a lot better. Tasted good too. :)
After dinner, Gretchen finished mixing the pie custard while I took paper towels and blotted more excess butter out of the pie crust. The pie was assembled and put into the oven to bake. Eventually, it emerged, was allowed to cool, and is now in the refrigerator waiting for tomorrow.
In the meantime, we adjourned to watch (for the second time) "Zoey's Extraordinary Christmas".
We'll see how the pie came out tomorrow night.
As for all of you, if Christmas is your holiday, have a merry one! And, if not, have a wonderful day.
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