When I grow

There are those who grow old and bemoan each passing year. Lost youth, lost opportunities, lost time. Then there are those who who refuse to grow old. Like Peter Pan they remain in a state of eternal youth. I went to a birthday party last night for a 29 year old. I haven't known him for very long, but I'd be willing to bet that the beer bong and beer pong table are the same ones that this group of friends used in college. I watched this group of close knit men and it was easy to imagine them as close knit boys, for although they all had aged and gone off in their separate ways to do "grown up thing" when they get together its as though not a day has passed since the day they first met.

As for me, I'm somewhere in between. I don't mind the passage of time because there's so much more that I can do now than I could do before. I look at what the future holds as a treasure chest, just waiting to be discovered and opened. Each year I get braver and try something farther outside my comfort zone. Whether it's jumping from 70 foot poles, traveling through foreign countries on my own, swimming with sharks, or zooming through the rain forest, each year I impress myself with my own growth. And it's just the same in the kitchen. I never imagined making a pie, let alone making my own pie crust. And now it was time for another pie challenge. A meringue. I have to say this was never high on the to-do list because frankly, I love fruit pies and have just never been that enamored with meringues. And maybe that's why this failed so miserably - lack of heart. Because my friends, we have now come to dish #3 of "that night" of salty tomatoes and fabulous cappelini. What better way to round out such a meal than with a vanilla meringue pie.

Actually, there were probably a hundred better ways to round out this meal, but no more fitting meal because this was a disaster to end all disasters. Every step of the recipe ended with mess. Mess which required oven cleaner to remove. The crust wouldn't cook and then it burnt, the filling sloshed out and all over the oven, the oven filled with smoke, the apartment filled with smoke, I spent most of the cooking time standing on a chair under the fire alarm with a magazine waving like a crazy woman. The meringue refused to brown, the meringue definitely separated from the filling. Honestly I gave Thatboy a slice, which he said actually tasted far better than he expected, but he was okay with me taking some pictures and tossing the entire thing.

And not to disappoint, but I'm not even going to put the recipe here since really it wasn't a good recipe. When I come up with a good recipe I promise to share it with the world. That is, if I attempt meringue again.