A very unlikely love story

I grew up with a mother who hated to cook. My favorite foods came out of boxes and cans; Rice a Roni, Cambell's Chicken Noodle Soup, Stouffer's Macaroni and Cheese, Tater Tots. Some nights, if my mother did not want to preheat the oven, turn on the stove, or have something delivered, she'd tell us to make a bowl of cereal and call it a night. This is not to say that everything we ate was busting with preservatives and artificial flavors. There were things my mother made - spaghetti with meat sauce and always extra carrots at my behest, enchilladas, cracker chicken (chicken breasts rolled in saltine-cracker crumbs and cooked in butter), chili, chicken noodle soup that was always uncharacteristically spicy, and a few others.
And then there was her lemon meringue pie. I always loved to be in the kitchen while she was making the pie even though I still can’t stand the pie itself. I would sit on a stool at the counter and watch my mother gather her ingredients on the counter - creating a real life collage that simply looked delicious. There were always two white bowls, one for the meringue and one for the filling, half a dozen lemons, a few eggs, the squat cans of condensed milk that looked like something out of my grandmothers pantry, the graham cracker crumbs for the crust, sugar, and milk.
My mother knew the recipe by heart but she still occasionally used the tattered old piece of yellow notebook paper to get her measurements. I used to watch her pour in the thick, sticky condensed milk with a stomach that ached with the thought of eating something as sweet and creamy as it smelled. And then the lemon juice, cups of it, always squeezed by hand; a feat at which I marveled. Then, the meringue: egg upon egg cracked open , their contents poured into a bowl with sugar and whipped to an impossible state of weightlessness. My mother made her pies with a deliberateness and an air of expertise that was not lent to any other aspect of her cooking.
The moments of watching my mother make her pie, lost in the sure and familiar rhythm of a life-long routine, confident in every motion, and channeling her past through the creation of a dish - these were the moments that have defined by passion for cooking. The recipe came from her grandmother, who had made this pie and many others to sell at a roadside stand to families migrating from the dust bowl to California during the Great Depression. My family had been one of those families - they had sold their farm and auto-shop in Kansas to move west and eventually settled in Pasadena, California. They were some of the lucky one's and though they traveled the same road as Steinbeck's Joad family, they did so with much less hardship and much more success.
Since I can remember, I have been concocting disasters in my mother's kitchen - much to her chagrin. I would gather up random spices and pour them into broths and over vegetables and rices and pretend to savor the outcomes. I would bake - without any conception of the finnicky nature of eggs, flour, sugar, or butter. My "recipes" were nearly always failures, and the messes they left behind drove my mother to xanax.
However, I persevered - I began to educate myself on ingredients, techniques, styles of cooking. I began to watch the food network obsessively. I would go to bookstores and gather up ten different cookbooks - sit in the aisles and just pore over them for hours. I began reading food blogs and magazines and come last Christmas, received a cookbook from every member of my extended family. My last birthday wish list consisted of only two items: a La Crouset stock pot, and a Kitchenaid stand mixer.
So, without further adieu, I would like to introduce myself, The Unlikely Gourmand. You can call me C, and for my first recipe, I would like to share with you my family's fourth-generation lemon meringue pie. It is the perfect pie to bring to any occasion - we have ours at every Thanksgiving and Christmas. My mother always uses fresh yellow lemons, but I, being somewhat of a sugar nazi and a Meyer Lemon fanatic, prefer using these sweeter, slightly tangerine-tinged little wonders for my version. I think the flavor is more complex and because they aren't as sour, you can cut back on the sugar, and thus, the calories (not to give you the wrong idea, here, folks - you will see me using absurd amounts of butter and bacon fat in the posts to come, but I thought we'd settle in with something a little less intimidating).

Grammy Scott's Lemon Meringue Pie

For the crust:
1/4 cup graham cracker crumbs (my mother always uses store-bought Honeymaid)
5 tablespoons of unsalted butter

1.Preheat oven to 350 degrees
2. Pack into the bottom and up the sides of a pie dish
3. Bake for 8 minutes or until crust has browned lightly
4. Let crust cool to room temperature (if you don't let the crust cool, your pie will be soggy)


For the filling:
1 can low-fat sweetened condensed milk
1/4 cup lemon juice
2 tablespoons of lemon zest (the zest from about 2 lemons)
2 egg yolks

1. Put all ingredients into a bowl and beat until smooth and creamy
2. Pour into cooled pie crust

For the Meringue:
6 large egg whites
1/4 tspn of cream of tartar
1/2 tspn of vanilla extract
5 tblspn sugar

1. Combine egg whites, cream of tartar, and vanilla in large mixing bowl. Beat eggs on high until eggs become fluffy and white. While continuing to beat egg whites on high, add a tablespoon of sugar at a time, slowly, until egg whites form stiff peaks.
2. With a rubber spatula, fold meringue onto the lemon filling carefully, taking care not to deflate the egg whites. Seal the edges of the meringue topping. Finally, using the spatula, make small circus-tent peaks that will brown in the oven.
3. Bake the pie for 20 minutes or until meringue begins to brown.