In mid-January, I stopped by Open Produce on my way home from work, and impulse-bought a bag of limes from their day-old section. I didn’t realize until I got home that I’d bought TWENTY-SIX limes for $1. What in the world was I going to do with TWENTY-SIX limes?

Key lime pie, of course.

I suppose it wasn’t technically ‘key lime’ pie as I had regular limes rather than ‘key limes’, which are smaller and stronger in flavor – but I followed a key lime pie recipe, so we’ll call it close enough.

This was the first pie I made for my pie of the month resolution, and it included a couple of firsts itself: first attempt at meringue and first graham cracker crust. The latter was a piece of cake (if you’ll excuse the expression), but the former was a bit trickier, piling layers of satiny egg whites and sugar onto the lime curd filling and hoping for the best as it went into the oven.

My fears were all for naught, as the meringue toasted perfectly in the oven, and came out looking nearly as spectacular as the pie smelled:

I don’t want to tell you how quickly we went through this pie, particularly as it was my birthday weekend and we’d already had a lot of sweets. I didn’t yet know that I was pregnant – we found out the next morning – but that soon-to-be-discovered fact may have contributed to my sweet tooth. Or, you know, the fact that the pie was as delicious as it looked. Besides, the meringue started to weep after half a day in the fridge, so finishing the pie was the only responsible thing to do. Right?