Lemon Meringue Pie

Today I got an urge to make Grandma Ketchum's Lemon Meringue Pie.  This is such a great recipe that we used to have every Thanksgiving.  Grandma would make it the day before, and it would be sitting on the washing machine out of the way of all the other food, along with a couple of pumpkin pies.  I haven't thought about the trouble that Grandma would go through to make pies for us, but I thought about it today because this pie is a PAIN to make!  Well, it's just a lot of work, and I'm not that good at it (as you can see by a sunken crust on the right and the strange meringue shape).  But, to my credit there were two power outages this afternoon that I was also having to accommodate.

But... it did make me think of a couple of funny lemon meringue pie stories that we've had over the years.  Once when Ryan was trying to make this pie he mistook the egg whites that we had separated out for the lemon juice (they do look alike) and added it to the filling instead of saving it for the meringue.  He realized it just as he was pouring it in and the mixture was turning into something resembling scrambled eggs.  We ate the pie anyway, and it was fine.

Another funny pie incident happened when some friends were over and I had a fresh pie shell cooling in the fridge.  We were all standing around ready to assemble the pie and then eat it warm when I accidentally  hit the pie plate against the door of the fridge.  The pie shell fell onto the floor and broke into a bunch of pieces (but luckily not the pie plate)!  We all just looked at the floor and then looked back at each other.  I said, "I just mopped the floor this morning."  So we quickly gathered up the pieces of the crust, put them into a casserole dish, poured in the lemon filling, and put the meringue on top.  After a few minutes in the oven and a few minutes of cooling we ate the pie with four spoons.  That was a great night!  (Thinking of you Derek and Chelsea - sorry that you're sick this week!)