Pie

 

What a job.  They turned out beautiful when I finally got done.  

So I baked the shell for the lemon meringue, remembering the last time I baked a shell.  The little man who was littler than he is now locked the oven door.  Now there is a safety mechanism that when it is locked it can't be unlocked until the oven has cooled down.  Naturally I had turned the oven right off but it was a well cooked shell by the time I could open the oven door.  And the little man felt so bad that he tried very hard to get the door to unlock and shifted the hook part so from then on it was a pain to use the oven.  We survived and had good pie that year. 

While waiting on the shell I put together the pumpkin pie and it was easy peasy.  Went right in the oven with no problems and came out perfect.  

The lemon meringue on the other hand became a trial and I felt like I had lost my pie touch.  First I went to make the lemon pudding in the microwave.  After eight minutes following the directions it came out looking curdled.  Wait...what?  It's just egg yolk, water, sugar and oops I forgot the pudding mix.  Now I was happy that was the problem as I could just start over without a trip to the store for more pudding mix (the kind Winco doesn't carry).  Then I have perfect lemon meringue filling.  And hey I already have extra egg whites from my first attempt to use in the meringue.  The directions call for three and I never find that to be enough.  So I like to use six.  I dump the first three in my bigger bowl and start cracking eggs.  The first yolk falls right in the whites and I couldn't get it out without breaking the yolk.  Monsta loved her treat of egg whites with one yolk.  Did I learn?  No.  I then cracked six eggs and separated them.  The last egg some of the yolk falls in the whites.  If there is yolk in the whites it won't beat up and become stiff.  I only have three eggs left so I work very hard to get the yolk out of my whites without making it worse.  I did manage it but it was iffy.  And then it seemed like my whites weren't going to get stiff and I was afraid I must have missed some yolk.  Patience paid off as it worked.  And voila I have a beautiful lemon meringue pie.

Alls well that ends well.  And we will enjoy them tomorrow.