Lime

It all started with a simple lime. Chase brought it home from school. He didn't know what to do with it. So I said, "Let's make a key lime pie". We have a recipe for it after all. It is one that we haven't ever tried. So we glanced though the recipe. The first ingredient was graham crackers. We looked around, but couldn't find any. We should have stopped there. But the urge to do something with that lime prevailed. I said to Chase, "Want to try an experiment?" Of course knowing Chase, I knew the answer to that. He loves cooking experiments. Golden Grahams are just graham crackers, right? Well wrong… But we tried anyway. We made a nice Golden Graham cracker crust. So we get to the next ingredient. Condensed milk… Well, we have this can, but it expired 5 years ago in 2005. We open it anyways. Hmmm… Looks like caramel. We should have stopped there. We could have made a different type of pie that didn't require condensed milk. Against our better judgment, we dump it in the pie… We managed to find a few more ingredients to add to the pie. I take a look. Isn't key lime supposed to be green? This pie looks like a big glob of caramelized puke. The next step is to make the meringue top. The top is presumable to hide the contents of the pie. After throwing all the meringue ingredients together, Chase uses the beaters to try and "stiffen" the meringue. He beats and beats and beats. After about fifteen minutes, we realize that this just isn't going to work. It isn't getting stiff peaks. In fact, it now appears runnier than when we started. Now we have a conundrum. Do we cover the caramelized puke with this runny goo? Or do leave the caramelized puke exposed and toss the goo? We tossed it. The pie is all done now. I toss it in the fridge for later, hoping in the back of my mind that somehow the fridge will magically consume the pie and it won't be there when I go back for it.

Two hours later… The pie is still there. The kids are excited to eat it. They made it after all. We didn't have any ice cream to go with it, just some cool whip that had been in the freezer too long. But they kids eat. I even had a few bites… Not terrible, if you don't look at what you are eating. Now we sit and wait… for the food poising to set in.

-Brian