Awesome Disabled

3 minute read time.

Turns out, I don’t know how to make a key lime pie. I don’t know anything about a key lime pie, actually. I assumed it was like a lemon meringue pie, but with limes instead. 

My youngest, Cleo, has been interested in key lime pies. She’s been asking me to help her make one since the summer started. I didn’t even know she liked limes. Or pies. 

It was about 48 hours into our summer break before Cleo insisted that I Look Up Key Lime Pie Immediately. I found an online recipe– fairly simple, but I didn’t have any of the ingredients, including the limes. I had to take the kids to the big box grocery store for new glasses anyway, so after my oldest, Lis, and I each chose new frames, we loaded up our cart with the ingredients.  

An important, but seldom discussed, first step to the whole key lime pie process, is the careful aging of the ingredients, which we did because we were too tired after the glasses shopping trip to make the pie. I piled them up on the kitchen counter. We would wait for them to call to us.

The next day after swimming lessons, my kids were pleasantly exhausted, and we decided it was time for the pie. You know what they say: you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs. Or course that doesn’t apply here, because there are no eggs in key lime pies. So a more appropriate saying would be: you can’t make a key lime pie without squeezing a ton of limes. And limes are hard to squeeze. Lis took on the job of Lime-Squeezer, while Cleo and I mixed the sweetened condensed milk and sour cream in a bowl. Lis had nearly a half-cup squeezed when they knocked the jar over and spilled most of the precious liquid. Sighing loudly, they shuffled to grab a towel, then wiped up their mess. The recipe said ¾ cup of lime juice, which felt far away from our measly takings thus far. But with patience and persistence, we got enough. Cleo decided she wanted to color the pie filling green, so that it looked more lime-y, so we mixed in the coloring and poured it into the graham crust. 

The recipe said bake for 5-8 minutes, which seems like barely more than warming it up. The recipe describes a just-baked pie as being “wobbly but not browned.” Well, when in Rome, I suppose. The filling wasn’t brown, but it also wasn’t wobbly, so I figured it was close enough, and took it out.

We were all proud of our bright green concoction– we worked hard, and we murdered a lot of limes. But we all realized something interesting afterwards: apparently, none of us like key lime pie. (At least, I assume our pie tastes like what it’s supposed to taste like. I have also realized that I have never eaten key lime pie before now.) Lis choked down a couple of bites before calling it a day. Cleo made it halfway through her slice.

“You know, Mom, it was just so yummy, I had to stop.”

“Sounds good, my darling.”

“Thanks for making key lime pie with me, Mom.”

I smiled. “Thank you for making us all do this.”

I learned that it was important to try new things, and to keep learning. There are infinite things to try, and one of the blessings of parenthood is the opportunity to try things that I wouldn’t be naturally drawn to. And although we don’t love eating key lime pie, we loved baking it together.