Coming home

Last August, my oldest son left home.

Even though I was so proud of him and so glad he was going, one of the hardest things I've ever done was to send Will off to the foreign mission field.  Jack snapped this photo of me and Will at the airport just before Will left.  I'm valiantly holding back the tears. 

Will has been serving in East Asia for many months.  I was privileged to visit him in Asia this March.



But his father and brothers haven't seen him since August 2013.



I took this photo of Jack taking pictures of all three boys last August.  What a blessed woman I am to have four wonderful men to love and care for!



Lots of red hair in one family, huh?



Tonight, Lord willing, Will will be home.  We're so excited we can hardly stand it.

Would you join me in praying for his safe travel? 

Deep Dish Key Lime Pie

Last week my son Preston turned 21.  It was hard for me to adjust last year to his no longer being a teenager, but I'd had a year to adjust to the idea of his being a full-fledged adult, so I was ready to celebrate with him!

Adult or not, he's still my boy.  And I still get the honor of making whatever kind of birthday cake his heart desires.  This year, it wasn't a cake he was craving; it was pie.  Key lime pie.

We don't live anywhere near the Florida keys, and good Key limes are hard to find around here.  So technically this is a Persian lime pie, but that doesn't sound nearly so good, does it?

I started looking for Key lime pie recipes, but I couldn't find one that quite delivered what I was wanting.  So I experimented and came up with my own.  If I really can't call it Key lime pie, I know what I'd call it instead: Sublime Lime Pie.  Because that's what it was.

The crust is a simple graham cracker crust.  I've used this recipe for many years, and I think it's just the right proportion of crumbs to sugar and butter.

You'll need 1 1/4 cups of graham cracker crumbs.  I make my own by crushing a sleeve of graham cracker sheets in my food processor.  You could crumble the crackers by hand by placing them in a ziptop bag and crushing them with a rolling pin or mallet.  One sleeve of graham crackers should yield a little more than you need.  You can also buy graham cracker crumbs.  But I would not recommend buying a pre-made graham cracker crust.

Melt 1/3 cup (5 1/3 Tablespoons) of butter (I do this in the microwave).  Add 1/4 cup sugar and the cracker crumbs.  Mix well.

Dump the crumb mixture into a deep-dish pie pan (this is the pie pan I have*); form into a crust with your fingers, and bake at 350 degrees for 10 minutes.  Set aside.

The filling is special mostly because there's a lot of it.  To fill a deep-dish pie crust, I made double the amount of filling I'd otherwise use.  (Note: I had a tiny bit of filling that wouldn't fit in my deep dish pan without running over.  If I'd known to expect some extra filling, I might have made a few tiny pies by making some extra crusts in muffin tins.)

The filling takes a few minutes to make, but it's quite simple.  First, you need some fresh lime zest.  This recipe requires a heaping tablespoon of zest, which was the zest of three of my limes.  I don't have a zester; I just use a microplane grater and it works just fine. (This is the grater I've had for years.*) A tip: zest lightly, getting just the top layer of skin from limes that you've washed and dried thoroughly.

Next, you need fresh lime juice.  Bonus: the zested limes are so easy to squeeze!  No bottled variety of juice by itself will suffice for this recipe, in my opinion.  Some fresh lime juice is required. I do think you can use half fresh juice and half bottled Key lime juice with good results. (This is the juice I like best.*)

As you can see, I like using the citrus juicer attachment for my KitchenAid mixer. (This attachment is the bomb, and it's not expensive—check it out!*)

Then you'll need just the yolks of four eggs.  Set the whites aside for another use; you won't need them for this pie.

And last is the magic ingredient: sweetened condensed milk.  TWO cans.  That's the real "key" to this Key Lime Pie.

After you've mixed the ingredients, you simply bake at 350 degrees for about 25 minutes, just long enough for the custard to set up.  Then you cool the pie completely before serving, and it dishes up beautifully.  It's extra-good with fresh whipped cream on top:

After Preston had blown out the candles on his birthday cake pie, imagine my delight when Jack said, "I think this may be the best pie you've ever made."  This recipe is a keeper!

Here it is:

Sublime Key Lime Pie

(Deep Dish Key Lime Pie)

Crust

1 1/4 cups graham cracker crumbs 

1/3 cup (5 1/3 Tablespoons) butter

1/4 cup sugar

Melt butter.  Mix cracker crumbs and sugar into melted butter.  Press crumb mixture into deep dish pie pan. Bake 12 minutes at 350 degrees.  Cool.

Filling
1 heaping Tablespoon lime zest
1 cup lime juice
4 egg yolks
2 cans sweetened condensed milk

Beat together lime juice, egg yolks, and lime zest.  Stir in sweetened condensed milk.  Mix until thoroughly combined.  Pour into prepared crust.  (Depending on the size of your pain, you may have a bit of filling mixture left over.)  Bake at 350 degrees for approximately 25 minutes or until set.  Remove to a wire rack to cool.  Chill well before serving.

*Click here for a printable copy of this recipe.*

Enjoy!

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I will receive a tiny commission, 

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The purpose of my life

It's been one of those where-did-I-put-my-Superwoman-cape? kind of weeks.

You know the kind, don't you?  The kind with special occasions to mark and special preparations to make and special measures to take.  The kind that starts with good and wholesome desires but that can all too easily leave me feeling as though I need to be locked up in a special kind of room--the kind with padded walls.

But something important happened to me this week.  By the grace of God, in the middle of one of the busiest days, a friend asked how I was doing, and I answered honestly: "Frantic."  My friend pressed for details, and I shared them: in addition to the normal activities and responsibilities of the week, my son was turning 21, I was hosting a large dinner party for some important business associates of my husband's, I was preparing for an important Board meeting, and I was getting ready to be away from home for a week.  With a haircut and a dentist's appointment thrown in for good measure, I had way too many things to do and not enough time to do them, at least not the way I wanted to do them.

My friend prayed for me, and I felt the stress of my busyness melt away as I remembered the truth: that the reason I was doing all these things was to bless people, not to impress them.

There was no need to be frantic.  Yes, I had a lot to do.  And yes, I wanted to do a good job.  But the purpose of my doing all these things was to be a blessing to people, and my being frantic would not be a blessing to anyone, including me.

So I made some adjustments--a few to my task list, and a lot to my attitude. The centerpiece for the dinner table, for instance: I simply placed some hydrangeas in a crystal bowl and lit a few candles.  It was simple and beautiful.  I cried a little, and I laughed a lot.  I asked for help, both from God and from people.

In short, I left the business of impressing people up to God, and I just tried to bless them. 

And my week with too much to do and not enough time to do it turned into a week of truth and goodness and beauty and--dare I say it?--fun!

How about you?  Do you ever get overwhelmed with your to-do list?  Can I pray for you?