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When I was maybe 10 or 11, my father, brother, uncle, and I took a trip down to the Florida Keys. I remember seeing the swamps, checking out an alligator farm, and seeing the manatees. We spend about a week down there, and I remember that we were late getting back, so late that my father had to drive overnight to make it back to Missouri (in time for what I don’t remember). I remember lying in the back of my father’s van, spread out with my brother (we were small) on a back seat made up to be a bed, sleeping on and off in a moving car while my dad drove through Georgia, Kentucky, Tennesse, through the night.

Another thing I remember from that trip was that both my father and uncle were steadfast in their belief that we could not leave the Florida Keys without a Key Lime Pie. I think we had some trouble finding one– I have some memories of us fumbling through a grocery store, trying desperately to find that local delicacy. I think we eventually gave up, and then stopped at a restaurant, only to find a pile of whipped cream in a graham cracker crust under the glass dessert case. My father bought three, and there was one sitting on the carseat in front of me the whole way back from Florida.

Unfortunately, key limes don’t seem to be available in the middle of winter Chicago, either, so to make this pie, I had to settle for regular old limes. If you want to play along, you’ll need:

1/2 cup lime juice (3 to 4 limes)
4 teaspoons grated lime zest
4 egg yolks
1 14 oz. can sweetened condensed milk
whipped cream
graham cracker crust (If you’re really hardcore you can make your own. I didn’t.)

First up, you’ve got to combine the egg yolks and lime zest. Both of these compose two of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do in these little cooking fests. Usually, cooking isn’t that hard– you put some stuff in a bowl, stir, pour it out, and cook it for a while. Seperating egg yolks and white, however, takes some skill. Well, if not skill, at least it takes some technique. You’ve got to crack the egg down the center, and then transfer the yolk back and forth, letting the white fall away until you’re left with a little round ball of yellow. Ok, so it’s not that hard, but it did make me feel like a cook.

Zest is another technique kind of thing. To get zest from a lime or lemon (I guess it’s only citrus), you have to grate off the coloring on the skin. Not the white part– that part is apparently bitter, but the actual colored part of the skin is supposed to be very flavorful and oily. If I was a professional cook, I would have used a zester, and quickly turned out tons of zest from the four limes that I bought. Of course, I’m not, so I used a cheese grater. It worked. Kind of. Well, good enough, anyway.

Beat those two together until they’re tinted light green. Beat in the milk (I’ve never used condensed milk before– it’s strange stuff, very gooey), and then beat in the juice. Again, if I was a professional cook, I would have a juicer to use, but I’m not, so I had to cut the limes and then squeeze the juice out by hand. I’m pretty sure my hands are going to smell like lime for the rest of my life. Not that I’m complaining.

With milk and juice beaten in, set that whole thing aside until it thickens up (shouldn’t take too long). Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 325 degrees.

After it’s thickened up a bit, pour the mix into the crust, spread out so it’s even, and bake the whole thing for 15 minutes. Pull it out, let it cool to room temperature, and then let the whole thing sit in the fridge for three hours.

I have to say that it’s not as good as the original Key Lime Pie that I had when I was a kid, but it tastes great anyway. I made a little mistake and put the whipped cream on early (you should probably wait to put it on individual pieces), but it was still good enough to eat.

I Require Sustenance runs every Wednesday on mikeschramm.com. I almost forgot! HAPPY GROUNDHOG DAY!