The Sad Story of the Lame-on Meringue Pie

The Sad Story of the Lame-on Meringue Pie

by Jennica Byers

adapted from the original

Once upon a time there was a girl who liked to cook. She decided to make a lemon meringue pie and share it with her boyfriend.

She collected the ingredients, pulled out the cookbook, and saw -gasp- that she needed lemon extract.  The girl decided to walk to the local market to obtain said extract.  Looking at the shelves, she located the item and nearly fainted dead away when she saw the price.

$5.00!  For only one ounce?!

She called her mother only to find out that $5.00 was in fact expensive for extract, but that lemon meringue pie *could* be made without it, though it might not taste as good.

The girl bought some fish and diced tomatoes and walked home.

She decided not to go to another store but to attempt the pie without the extract.  She looked up instructions on how to make lemon extract, and, ignoring the instructions which called for vodka and weeks of refrigeration, tried to add lemon peel to vanilla extract. Unfortunately quite a bit of vanilla splashed out and this was the lame-on meringue pie's undoing.

The course was set and the curse was cast.

She made the crust and the filling but -oh dear- the crust shrunk down in the pan and the filling did not taste like lemon.

Stretch the sides of the crust back up!  Dump in the extra lemon peel!  Add more lemon juice!  This *has* to work!!!

Unfortunately the filling would *not* taste like lemon!

The girl turned to the meringue and tackled that.  The meringue didn't come out quite right, either, but she put it on the pie and baked the unfortunate pastry anyway!

The meringue toasted quite nicely, and the girl hoped that the extra lemon had lent more flavoring to the filling by now.  She put the pie in the icebox and let it chill.

However, as usual, the girl was impatient. She put the pie in the freezer but soon removed it to cut a piece to give to her boyfriend.  She tasted the filling and -bleah!- it did not taste like lemon.  It tasted like some strange lemon candy thing.  She tried to see if it still tasted good, even if it didn't taste like lemon.

It did not taste good.

This was embarrassing!  She couldn't give the man a weird-faint-lemon-candy-thing lame-on meringue pie with his friends around!  Maybe if he were there with her it wouldn't be so bad to have him taste it. But she couldn't justify bringing him something weird at work, not to mention she would lose her parking spot and have to walk a quarter of a mile back to her house upon her return.

*sigh*

The girl resigned herself to keeping the weird pie to herself and consoled herself with the fact that if worse came to worst, she could always eat the meringue and chuck the rest.


Moral of the story: Buy the extract.  Avoid the curse.