Happy Pi Day!

We celebrated with a lemon meringue! I love to eat this pie, but it is a lot of work to create one. My mom whipped out two of them, rather regularly, and frequently on an early Sunday morning. If a recipe called for eggs, then she baked it. She was the queen of pies. That ability has been passed on down to her granddaughter (our child) who was recently the Grand Champion Pie Maker at the Oregon state fair, and also received lesser accolades in that contest on multiple years.

I've eaten a store-bought lemon meringue pie, but it is nothing like the real, homemade thing, I assure you. Yes, you can have a pie to satisfy the cravings for the tart/sweet and creamy egg-white goodness. But, when you create it from ingredients in your own kitchen...well, for one thing, you make a big mess!

Here is the cleaned up debris field from my afternoon creation:

And those are just the dishes I prefer not to wash in the dishwasher.

I realize that not everyone is a pie snob. But for lemon meringue, I simply have to make it myself. I'm pretty accomplished and it doesn't take more than a couple of hours now. But when I first made my own version of this, in my own kitchen, it took a really long time. I'd watched my mom make pie all of my life. She wasn't the mom who would stand by and let you practice while she supervised. She was cooking for real every time she made food. There would be a large crowd gathering soon for the meal she was turning out, so I learned by watching closely. Then, when I first made gravy, or meringue, or yeast bread, I had a vivid memory of all the little tricks. But, I was on my own, in my own home. 

There are SO many steps to this pie. But, after you scrape off the zest, and squeeze the lemons, and cook up the pudding by stirring constantly, and add some of the hot filling to the egg yolks first before beating them in, and whip up the egg whites and drizzle in the sugar, and then carefully seal the meringue to the edges of the crust, and fluff up the center of it, and sprinkle on the coconut, and bake it, you get this wonderful confection. 

And after it cools a bit, there is nothing better! It is also ephemeral, so we gobble it down in just two days. Gluttony? Perhaps...but Pi Day comes but once a year, so we don't feel too badly about it.