Tag: American vignette

Key Lime Pie

June 12th, 2014

Art Credit: KendyllHillegas on Etsy, Key Lime Pie original illustration

Tart. Tangy. Zesty. Zany. Key Lime Pie: it’s yellow, not green.

You might think if I was going to write about pie in Georgia I’d write about pecan, all sugary and whiskey brown, the pecans a toasty crunch then a succulent give between the teeth, or maybe peach with its sensual slippery melon-colored sweetness. But I’m not. I’m writing about Key Lime because it’s hot and humid outside, and when its hot and humid out and I think of dessert, I think of my Dad fishing in the Gulf Stream and the sunburn and the grill and the chilled pie that followed.

Summer dinners of my coastal Georgia childhood – or at least the summer dinners my mouth still waters for – often consisted of blue crabs we caught in the creek, or fresh shrimp my mom bought from the marina under the bridge. We’d follow those warm seafood meals with ice cream or Pudding in a Cloud (chocolate pudding in a “crust” of Cool Whip), but the best days were when Dad ran the boat 4 hours offshore Savannah to where the water changed from coastal brown to deep ocean blue, dropped a line, and brought home fresh fish. He came home salty in the late afternoon, with a raccoon burn on his face from his sunglasses, and before changing clothes or rinsing the boat he cleaned the fish, scraping scales with a flashing silver knife till they popped off and glistened in the sun.

Dad brought the fish up to Mom in the kitchen where she rubbed the fillets with butter and Paul Prudhomme’s Cajun seasoning while he lit the coals in a kettle grill. He sipped beer while he watched the coals, waiting for them to glow. When they burned till each one formed an even crust of ash he nestled a cast iron skillet into them. An onshore evening breeze rustled the palm fronds and cooled his burned skin, and after a while, the cast iron skillet would begin to glow. Dad tossed the seasoned fillets into the red hot pan and they hissed, blackening within seconds. He pulled them off – moist, succulent fillets encrusted with paprika and cayenne, garlic and thyme.

The fish flaked on our tongues, soft and buttery, crisp and spicy, and on lucky nights, the dinner was followed by Key Lime Pie. There was not better accompaniment for blackened fish than that cold yellow silk pie that zinged your tongue with citrus summer and crunched sugary buttered graham between your teeth. Mom made the pie while Dad bobbed in the ocean, and it chilled while he burned.

I don’t remember now if Dad cleaned up by the time we ate dinner or if he dined with the ocean still encrusted on his skin. I do remember the clean feeling after eating Key Lime Pie, though – that crisp, cool, fresh finish to a hot, salty summer day.

This is my entry for the American Vignette: Pie challenge on Andrea Reads America. I hope you’ll consider submitting. Key Lime Pie recipe follows.

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Thankfully, Key Lime Pie had a moment in the 80s or 90s and now you can buy Nellie & Joe’s Key Lime Juice nearly anywhere in the US. Or at least on the eastern seaboard. I bought mine at our local Kroger in the mountains in Blacksburg, Virginia. Key Lime Pie is one of the easiest of all pies to make ever. You don’t even have to cook it if you don’t want to – the key lime juice denatures the egg yolks, “cooking” the pie like ceviche. Make it with whipped cream or without, with merengue or without, it’s up to you. I prefer mine neat. Follow the recipe right on the bottle of Nellie & Joes or follow this adaptation from Maida Heatter’s Pies and Tarts:

4 egg yolks
1 14 oz can sweetened condensed milk
1/2 cup Key lime juice
1 9-inch graham cracker crust

You can use an electric mixer, an egg beater, or a wire whisk. Beat the yolks lightly to mix. Add the condensed milk and mix. Gradually add the lime juice, beating or whisking only until mixed.

Pour into the crumb crust. It will make a thin layer; the color will be pale lemon, not green. It will be fluid now, but as it stands a chemical reaction takes place and the filling will become about as firm as a baked custard. Refrigerate overnight.

Or, if you wish [Andrea’s note: this is how I prepare it], bake the filled pie for 10 minutes in a 350 degree oven, then cool and chill.

Whipped cream is optional on this, natives do not use it – restaurants do.
Cutting cloth

May 22nd, 2014

I am 23, newly married, and my husband is on a research trip in Bermuda for the next six months. I am a young woman alone in our new home in Takoma Park, Maryland, but I feel safe up here in the upstairs apartment of a cute cottage house with a steep, angled roof. The landlady, a hip, smiling woman with centimeter-long bleached curly hair and velvety chocolate skin, painted our walls a gleaming white – not an ecru or an eggshell, but a white white that shines clean and bright when the sun pours in all of our windows. She lives downstairs with her two handsome sons, and she welcomed us by tossing pennies under the throw rugs when we moved in. To bring us prosperity, she said. She’s studying feng shui.

Maria is over today. She works with me in the lab and her Os are round when she speaks them. She’s from Minnesohta. She keeps me company while my husband is away, and we carpool together to work. The first time we parked in the UMD garage she got out and walked to the front of the car, put her hands on her knees and crouched down to inspect the cement wall in front of us. “Where do you plug your car in in winter?” she asked. Being from Georgia I had no idea what she was talking about. Now, she fans her armpits a lot and says, “My Gahd it’s hot.” Being from Georgia, I am tickled by how much the heat of a Maryland summer distresses her. Maryland summer is nothing compared to the oppressive, heavy heat of coastal Georgia.

Being from Minnesota, she was probably tickled in winter when I white-knuckled the steering wheel when it snowed, or in spring when the trees were in bloom and I couldn’t stop gasping. On the coast of Georgia spring is subtle. Most of the trees have leaves year-round, and they do not burst forth into flower before leafing into green. When we drove to work, I’d exclaim over every cherry blossom, every Bradford pear, every redbud. “Look at that one, Maria! Those pinks!” I’d turn my head and see another, “And that one is just covered, I mean COVERED with white flowers!” She’d smile quietly and think of her Minnesota home.

Now, we are in the spare room with newspapers spread on the round wooden table. Maria is teaching me how to make patterns for sewing. Calico cloth that reminds me of Ma Ingalls is draped over the back of a wooden chair. My bike leans against one white wall, and Maria and I bump against the others. It being an upstairs apartment with slanted ceilings, the room is small and cramped, but it is happy with bright light pouring in the windows and reflecting off those crisp white walls. Maria tells me about paddling the boundary waters while she positions spaghetti straps on newspaper, straps that remind me of summer and freckles and Georgia beaches. I tell her about jellyfish and seashells and palm trees while I finger the Little House calico.

The sun glints off of scissors as Maria cuts through print along the pencil mark she traced from the tank top she brought. We are copying the pattern, two women alone, crafting summer garments from what we have, from what we know, cutting cloth and making something new.

The submissions for my Andrea Reads America American Vignette series are rolling in, and they are a pleasure to read. This is my entry for the second prompt, American Vignette: Summer Garments. If you have a story to tell about summer clothes in your state , I hope you will submit!
I remember boiled peanuts

May 7th, 2014

I remember boiled peanuts; I remember them from the barrier islands of Georgia. On hot Saturdays in summer, my family loaded our boat with beach chairs, coolers, canvas tote bags filled with towels, Doritos, and Mom’s chocolate chip cookies, and we motored off across the rippled brown water of tidal rivers. Crusted salt glittered on the white boat deck, and in the cooler, along with the cold beers and Cokes, there would sometimes be a bag of boiled peanuts. The peanuts, soft like fat tan peas, squirted salty juice when you opened their shells. On the islands there was salt on the boat deck, salt in the rivers, salt on my skin, and salt in the peanuts. And I love salt.

I remember boiled peanuts, and I remember where I ate them. After combing tan sand beaches for olive snail shells, after slapping mosquitoes in the palmetto scrub, live oak, palm tree forest, after trying to stand on our fabric raft in the tidal creeks, I returned to the cooler famished. I pulled out a cold Coke and the ziplock bag of peanuts, I carried them calf deep into the glassy brown creek, I planted my shiny red Coke can in the sand just above where land transitioned to water, and I sat down in the water with the bag of peanuts in my criss-cross-apple-sauce lap. I sat in the salty water in my neon pink one piece and I ate my boiled peanuts.

I remember I grabbed whole handfuls of the sodden peanuts, and I held them underwater: to season them even more. I split the shells by pinching the seam or by slitting them with my fingernail if they didn’t pop when I squeezed, and I sucked those squishy, salty, brown peas out. Sometimes, if it was a three- or four-nutter, I popped the whole thing in my mouth, shell and all, and sucked the salty juices out like sucking the sugary flavoring out of a popsicle. Then I cracked the shell between my molars and ate the soft nuts. A pile of wet shells accumulated on the sand above my Coke can, and I collected them when I finished. Leave only your footprints and all.

Eating salty boiled peanuts in Georgia’s salty tidal waters was one of my favorite childhood rituals, and I think of those marshy creeks every time I eat boiled peanuts now, landlocked in the Appalachian mountains of Virginia. Our children love boiled peanuts – we buy a large steaming styrofoam cup of them at a roadside stand every summer on our road trip to visit grandparents in Georgia and Florida – but our kids have never eaten them the way I did growing up; they’ve never eaten them butt planted in salty water at a tidal creek’s edge, a cold Coke can within arm’s reach in the sand. Our kids love boiled peanuts, and our kids love salt. And I think this summer, on our trip to Georgia, we will give them boiled peanuts on the islands, and I will show them the best place to eat them.

I am seeking guest contributors for my Andrea Reads America site. This is my entry for the first of a series of writing challenges I will be hosting there as I attempt to collect stories from all 50 states. I hope you will consider submitting. For details on the first prompted challenge, please see American Vignette: I remember. A Writing Challenge.

Tag: American vignette

Key Lime Pie

Cutting cloth

I remember boiled peanuts