Lemon Pie (by Linda)

While shopping at the supermarket in our neighborhood I spied cans of sweetened condensed milk on the top shelf. I immediately thought of a fantastically good recipe for Key lime pie that my good friend, Anna of Richfield, MN, has shared with me. I bought two cans of the milk and emailed Anna for the recipe.


I've always thought the Egyptian lemons had a limey taste so I decided to use the Key lime pie recipe to make an Egyptian Lemon Pie. Egyptian lemons are much smaller than typical U,S. lemons, more like the size of a Key lime. They also produce more juice for their size than U.S. lemons.


I only squeezed 10 of these small lemons to make 3/4 cup of juice. I had brought some graham crackers thinking that I would use them to make a cheesecake but a lemon pie sounded more appealing and something that was not familiar to Egyptians.


The recipe not only tastes good but takes very few ingredients and is so easy to make. The first pie I made was a trial to make sure it would turn out, not that I haven't made the recipe successfully many times in Bloomington. Keep in mind that I have a somewhat temperamental oven here in Egypt. The first pie was a success but it didn't taste as limey as the lemonade we dearly love here. I made another and gave it to my neighbor.


After a couple days I asked how they liked the pie. The 16 year old daughter screwed up her face like she was sucking on a lemon and asked if I had used any sugar in it. Only two cans of sweetened condensed milk-that's plenty of sugar! The adults in the family gave the pie an enthusiastic thumbs up. Another pie was made and given to another family as thanks for a tasty rabbit and pigeon meal. They also declared the pie to be good.

(by Linda)