THANKFUL FRIDAY

Monday evening, Michael and I picked Chad up from the rental car place at the airport. Then we picked up a to-go order of too much BBQ, took it back to our place and ate too much food while talking about all of the things. The next morning, I made Chad and I breakfast and we sat on the couch talking about even more things while Michael left for work. Chad had to be in Blue Springs at 10:00AM that morning to get training on and pick up his and Jess’s new camper van. I drove him out there and we unloaded all of his gear into a waiting room where we sat and talked about his workshop until an employee came in to discuss paperwork with Chad. Then Chad and I had the weirdest, most awkwardly rushed goodbye. We cried in front of strangers and then I practically ran from the building.

I had taken the whole day off from work because I didn’t really know what the plan was going to be. So when I got home, I cleaned the salty tear streaks from my face and made a lemon meringue pie. Because when life gives you lemons, you make lemon meringue pies. I had promised my coworkers a lemon meringue pie for Valentine’s Day and never delivered. This was me keeping a partial promise. I don’t make this pie but maybe once or twice a year. There’s just more work involved in making it then there is to quickly throwing together an apple pie. Ten of the eggs have to be separated, six lemons have to be zested and then those six lemons have to be juiced. I don’t have a citrus juicer and all of this has to be done by hand. The pie crust has to be made, baked and cooled before you start building the custard. And then making the filling requires me to stand at the stove with my bowl set up over a pot of simmering water, just constantly stirring until the contents of the bowl starts to thicken. That takes about fifteen minutes. The meringue is the easiest part. I start off in the double bowler, heating the egg whites and sugar just until the sugar melts. Then it gets transferred to the mixer and I can take a break.

But the end results are worth it.

I thought about our rushed, weird goodbye as I stirred pie filling and thought about other times I’d had to say hasty goodbyes to those I love. Nothing tops that one time Talaura put a giant cookie in my hands, said “Iloveyoubye!” and shoved me off the bus at LaGuardia. I don’t remember ever really saying goodbye to Chris. I remember when he stopped making any sense and being overwhelmed with not being able to do enough to ease his pain, but I wasn’t home when he died. The nurse called me ten minutes after I got to work. Chris didn’t even give me a cookie before shoving me off the bus and this is not where I planned for this post to go, but here we are.

Goodbyes are hard.

Chad and I had less than twenty four hours to pack in all the words and laughter, to actually look at each others’ faces while we told each other as much as we could about what has really been happening since the last time we saw each other or talked on the phone. I always want more time though, which adds to the difficulties in saying goodbyes. Today, I am concentrating on the time we were gifted and not the goodbye.

Today, I am concentrating on the art of not saying goodbye.

LEMON MERINGUE

I have pie making skills #lemonmeringue

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I grew up in the age of Strawberry Shortcake and I can probably say that I owned every single Strawberry Shortcake doll. My sheets and bedding, including a canopy, was all Strawberry Shortcake. I had Strawberry Shortcake clothes, pajamas, a quilt, a sleeping bag and a metal lunch box. I had the Strawberry Shortcake baby doll that blew scented kisses when you squeezed her. My mother made me a tablecloth with napkins out of Strawberry Shortcake material for my little table. If there was something Strawberry Shortcake related, I owned it. My mother also made me an exact replica of Strawberry Shortcake’s dress for Halloween one year. Thinking about it all now, makes me feel like I had/have some obsessive compulsion issues. I eventually moved on to other popular toys of the 80s, but I think that the only other thing I collected with such obsession were elephants.

My favorite Strawberry Shortcake character was not Strawberry Shortcake. She’s nice. I still own one of these and occasionally hold her head up to my nose, but my favorite Strawberry Shortcake character was Lemon Meringue. She just smelled the best of all of them. Lemony and sweet. Her hair was also wild and curly and bright yellow, which was something I loved so much about her. I have a sweet tooth for lemon desserts and I attribute all of it to my Lemon Meringue doll. There is a restaurant that Michael and I have been too a few times. The food is okay. It’s a little pricey and the service is kind of terrible. The only reason we go there is for their lemon meringue pie. The meringue on this pie is like marshmallow cream and for a while figuring out how to make it became yet another one of my obsessions.

Then I came across an online article where the pastry chef of this restaurant posted the entire recipe for their lemon meringue pie. Boy, that was dumb.

I have made this pie twice now in the last month or so. Lemons are cheap. Eggs? Well, that’s probably the biggest expense because the recipe calls for six whole eggs and ten yolks. Left over egg whites go into making the meringue. Most of the work time is spent standing over a double boiler while stirring. And stirring. And there’s more stirring. The lemon filling has to reach a pudding like consistency without cooking the eggs into scrambled eggs. It is not the kind of pie you just throw together and is very much a lesson in patience. You stand at your double boiler setup stirring and stirring while nothing seems to be happening. This goes on for several minutes. Then just when you think you’ve done something wrong like your butter was too cold or you didn’t do a good enough job separating your eggs because the mixture is not getting any thicker, it starts to coat your whisk. The shift from liquid to pudding is quick. It all comes down to heating the eggs to the exact right temperatures to unfurl tightly packed proteins in the yolk and then coat those molecules with sugar so that the proteins remain unfurled.

The reward for your patience is a bright, tart, lemony filling. Once the pie is completed, it smells exactly like my Lemon Meringue doll from 1980. It is a bright slice of sunshine during a season of very little sunshine.