Key Lime Pie and Why it Matters

I grew up home-schooled.

Past that, I grew up home-schooled in Florida.

My point is, “summer” never really meant anything special to me.

Summer for me and my sisters was just the time where we had to sit in more traffic with Mom, waiting endlessly to get anywhere on the Orlando hellscape that is I-4, and knowing from the time we were little that you do not go to Disney during summer vacation.

As an adult, I worked at hotels on Disney property (outside, even), hated everything cold, and lived for the sunshine and summer weather even when it was blistering hot and full of tourists.

Now I live in New England.

As someone who spent their entire life hating anything under 70 degrees and absolutely taking summer for granted, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t appreciate it more now.

One thing I’ve always appreciated is food. Winter might have the upside of cozy comfort foods, but you can’t tell me that the thought of a grill full of hot dogs and burgers doesn’t immediately make you feel warm sunshine on your face. In fact, I dare you to think of a picnic table and not pair it with heaping bowls of potato salad, macaroni salad, chips, mango salsa, fresh fruit, apple pie…I’m almost forgetting it’ll be cold again at some point just thinking about it.

There is a seemingly endless array of foods one could associate with summer, and that’s not even counting drinks. I may be a fan of cheeseburgers and hot dogs to the point my boyfriend knows I want to go to any party where they’re even mentioned, but I’d be willing to say my favorite summer staple is a lesser-remembered one.

If you’ve never had a good key lime pie….oh, honey. You haven’t lived.

Personally, I’m more of a lemon girl myself, but there’s something about a good key lime pie. The tart, tangy custard….the lightly sweet, crisped crust…..a bit of whipped cream or cool whip to top it off…it truly is summer encapsulated in a pie. Even if you don’t have a huge sweet tooth, or don’t like heavy desserts, or you just aren’t a big pie guy (in which case you’d be wrong, but I digress), I find it difficult to believe that anyone wouldn’t have a bite of this fruity magic and instantly agree that it’s the one.

But there are some very wrong key lime pies.

Maybe it’s too tart; too sweet. Perhaps the crust is soggy, or some genius put whipped cream instead of cool whip on before it went in the fridge and opened the door to a pool of sad, melted cream covering their masterpiece. (I could lie to you and say I’ve never made that mistake, but, well, I’d be lying.)

Maybe the only mistake made was that the very limes themselves were wrong. Maybe that’s why the pie is one of my favorites; it reminds me of home. While the key lime is native to parts of Asia and wasn’t brought to Florida until the mid 1800's, the ‘key’ part of its name is in reference to the Florida Keys - and pretty much synonymous with key lime pie itself.

Homesickness is weird, and I’ll probably never forget living in New England for a couple of years already, being right in the middle of the Covid lockdown, going to the store for some necessities mid-week, and stumbling across a small stand in the produce section holding a little tower of key limes. I probably looked like more of a maniac than we all felt during those few months, but I was on my phone in seconds looking up key lime pie recipes. After all, what was I going to do with myself being home from work and bored out of my mind other than start baking like it was my new job? I may have almost regretted having an entire pie to eat by myself (because my then-roommates were not as sweet-toothed as I find myself, and a bite or two was enough for them), but it did certainly remind me that not everything was terrible in the gloominess of the times.

Maybe it was the memory of home when I hadn’t been able to visit in so long, or the surprise of finding something unexpectedly pleasant when everything was so terrifying, or just the fact that a recipe I’d never made came out well, but something I’d always taken for granted meant the world to me. Food is generally viewed as a unifying thing, a comfort, a piece of home, and it absolutely was in that moment. Summer may not have always been special to me, but at this point it always feels like home, and it’s when I feel the most myself. I may not be in Florida where summer and key lime pie are year-round pleasures, but when I’m stomping through the New England snow and cursing myself for moving to what feels like the tundra for a good chunk of the year, the memories of sunshine, warmth, sweat, special-limes, hot dogs, and family never ceases to get me through it.