Thursday 6 September 2012

In which I am a domestic goddess...



Okay, okay, I am not exactly queen of hearth and home.  But this past week, I washed the floors, hosted two sets of guests (which entailed a lot of laundry, but great company) and made a pie!

As I may have mentioned before, there are a number of fruit bearing trees in the Racquet Club where I live, including orange, ackee, soursop, avocado (known locally as pear), guinep, and limes.  I’ve been collecting limes for using in drinks, water, and salads for a while now, but last week I thought I would try to make a key lime pie.  

Now, using recipe “Key Lime Pie VI” from recipes.com, there were only 4 ingredients, so I thought pie making was going to be easy. I went out to the tree to pick some limes...


If you look into the bottom of the pool, you can see limes sitting there now.  They fall off the tree and roll in the pool.  So far, it still has a chlorine flavour.

See the lime in the centre of this picture?  Ah ha!  Harder then you'd think, no?  Plus, lime trees have pokey thorns, which you can't see at all in this picture.

Entitled "limes", will sell for millions of dollars (ha!)
Trying to zest something smaller than a golf ball is harder than it looks.  I zested about 20 of them, then used my handy dandy lime juicer to squeeze 3/4 cup juice until - AAAAARRRGGGG - I knocked the lime juice cup over and spilled lime juice all down the counter and onto the floor and all over me.  The only saving grace was that it smelled really good when I was cleaning it up, but my shoes stuck to the floor almost immediately. 

Back to the tree to pick some more limes.  THIS time, put the measuring cup well out of the way so I won't knock it over...


Scene of the crime pre-incident - 35 limes in total for this pie.

The other two ingredients are sour cream and a lot of condensed milk.  Apparently, the first key lime pie recipes are from the 1930s in the Florida Keys, which at that time were not connected by road to the mainland. So they had to use condensed milk, because they couldn't get any fresh. I still have half a can left and I've been using it the way Jamaicans do - a good helping in my cup of coffee.  Add some ice cubes and you have a fancy drink worthy of Starbucks.  (Can't have very many of these, though - I start running in small, tight circles, faster and faster.)

Pie went in the oven for 10 minutes then into the fridge for a couple of hours.  It appeared to pass quality control.


L-R, Ivy, Brianna and Captain Phil
Ivy and Brianna are also Cuso volunteers who came up from Kingston to visit for the weekend.  They only suffered minor sunburn on the beach, no pie-induced food poisoning.

In other domestic news, I knit a sting ray! Okay, the official title is a "shawlette," but it looks an awful lot like a sting ray to me.  It is going to Erika in celebration of a birthday and a move to a place that is in need of some tropical cheer.


Every once in a while I see a sting ray leaping out of the water when I am on the boat.  They are usually grey, not blue, but the shape is very similar, although without the lace patterns.

Finally, the winner of the karmic balancing socks is Karla Everett.  Thanks again to Karla and to everyone else who donated to Cuso on my behalf.  Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some knitting to do...