June 6, 2005

InnSane
Usually I make the pies (3 of them) in the early afternoon when I have the kitchen to myself, but I had to go to Albany for supplies (after having just spent some grueling moments hauling sandwiches, an ice chest full of drinks, 3 large bins of picnic supplies, fruit, cookies, a cooler of ice water and a cooler of ice tea down a trail to the painting site to set up lunch for the group) and didn’t get back until the preparations for dinner were well under way.

So I was trying to hurry and miss read the amount of cornstarch — I used teaspoons when I should have used tablespoons! So of course the lemon filling did not firm up. But I refused to give up! Luckily I had just pick up an extra bag of lemons in Albany. I quickly set aside the bad batch (I’ll try to fix it later) and started a new batch.

The group of painters were great. The pies came out of the oven just as they were finishing dinner. I asked if they wanted to wait for the pie to cool or just have the alternate which was cheesecake. They all said that they were happy to wait. So we put the pies in the freezer for about 20 minutes and while this wasn’t enough time to make them cold at least they cooled down to mildly warm. We served the pie and when I finally came out of the kitchen everyone cheered! They said that it was the best lemon pie they had ever had. There were some who said that they didn’t like lemon pie, but they loved this one. And there were some who said that they would never have thought to have lemon pie warm but now that they had tried, they preferred it that way! A disaster turned into a success — a lemon into lemonade!

Whew. I think I need a lemonade for myself!