It's Hard Being Southern in a Foreign Land

It's Hard Being Southern in a Foreign Land


No matter how far I travel from home, I will always be Southern.  I will always obey the rules of Southern hospitality that my mother ingrained in me even though that might mean I am saying yes mam and no sir as a sign of respect to an older New Guinea Islander who understands no English.  I will always look forward to that first glass of sweet tea and bbq sandwich when I get home from my travels.  Hopefully you can understand that I carry a lot of my ideas about food and home with me wherever I go.  I didn't realize how much until I was on a live-aboard dive boat in the Maldives with my dad.  The chef was trained in classic French cooking and the breakfast crepes were heavenly.  All of the food had been quite good so when they announced one night that the dessert would be lemon merengue, imagine my excitement!  I do so love a good lemon merengue ice box pie as it is more commonly known in the south.  Nothing in this world tastes as good on a hot afternoon as chilled lemon merengue pie!  When we were each served a small ramekin, I thought how clever to have made individual pies and to keep them so cold in these small dishes!  As my dad (also southern born and raised) and I began to dig in our ramekins we turned to each other in disbelief.  "Where's the pie?" I asked.  Dad said, "I don't know.  Mine doesn't have pie either!"  Of course the rest of the guest, most French, some yankees (California and New England) wanted to know why the two of us were digging for gold in our ramekins.  "Where's the pie?!" I said again in response to all of their questions.  One of the French said, "There is no pie, it is merengue."  Huh.....Where I come from there should be pie under here.  You mean y'all are just going to eat the merengue?!  They ate it and thought it was wonderful.  Poor, poor, sad people who don't know that merengue is what you put on top of an ice cold lemon pie and often scrape off to the side so you can enjoy more pie!


Below you will see a copy of my Gammie's Lemon Ice Box Pie recipe and perhaps have a better understanding of what I was expecting in my ramekin.  Notice that the merengue part needs only the words, add merengue, as in it is a bland topping that everyone knows how to make and add to the finished pie.