Charcoal Meringue Pie
“My dad was a pretty good cook — he made dinner at least once a week and was always the Sunday morning chef. He loved a certain lemon meringue pie — the one from the recipe on the back of the Eagle Brand sweetened condensed milk can. He used to make them fairly often, and he always made the crust out of vanilla wafers — crushed on the bottom and whole rounds on the side.
“I came home from college one time, and while I was puttering in the kitchen I saw something new on the kitchen wall. It looked like one of those cast iron molds that people hang on their kitchen walls for decoration. I didn't really think much of it at first, but eventually I got curious. I just couldn’t figure out what it was. Finally I had to ask, and the story came out:
“My dad had a pie in the oven, and my parents were getting ready to go out. So he turned the oven off and decided to leave the pie in it to cool. Then he and my mom left.
“What my dad didn’t realize was that he’d turned the oven ALL THE WAY UP, not off. When my parents got home shortly thereafter, the house was filled with smoke, with the oven probably just moments from exploding in flames.
“They got the oven turned off and the smoke cleared out, and what was left? The lemon meringue pie, not reduced to ashes but perfectly carbonized in its original shape, down to the little peaks in the meringue topping and the perfect scalloped edges of the erstwhile vanilla wafers! And that’s what was hanging on the kitchen wall. A pretty fitting decoration after all, I think.”
