Cooking for Students 101: Lemon Meringue Pie (and PEAPOD)

So if you're like me - 21, student, working, living in a studio with no air and no clue - cooking is a skill you likely need some work on. I am someone who instead of quickly throwing together grilled chicken and a salad (which is readily available in my fridge), will eat 3 bowls of frosted flakes for dinner. Now that I'm living with my health conscious boyfriend (and now that I can no longer blame a little extra weight on the freshman 15), I have been making more of an effort to prepare my own meals, plan ahead, and use fresh ingredients. For someone who has never had experience cooking before (or as a general rule of thumb, you're a first-year male student) this task can be extremely daunting. Before I give you my tips on making a DELICIOUS and REFRESHING lemon meringue pie, let me enlighten you on shopping for these ingredients. Frankly, it sucks. Carrying all of that stuff everywhere hurts my arms and since I often have to take a subway and bus to get to the closest Trader Joe's, I've started using a website called Peapod. USE PEAPOD. It is the best thing that's happened to me in my college years. You shop online and they deliver your groceries to you. This makes sense for me because I can't carry all of my groceries on my own but also, the small grocery stores near my apartment in the city are WILDLY expensive and Peapod offers great deals and specials. Check it out.

On to lemon meringue pie. YUM.

The first "homemade" anything I've - successfully - made in my new apartment is a lemon meringue pie. After 6 grueling hours, 2 failed attempts, and 3 trips to the grocery store, I am here to offer you a FULL PROOF lemon meringue pie.

Here is the link to the recipe that I followed:
http://allrecipes.com/recipe/grandmas-lemon-meringue-pie/

PS - There is a very helpful VIDEO you can watch on how to make this that I wish that I had watched BEFORE attempting.

So first things first - stock up on groceries. The groceries are easy and inexpensive. The first mistake I made was buying a graham cracker crust. NO. DO NOT BUY A GRAHAM CRACKER CRUST, it will not work. In the frozen section of the grocery store, a Pillsbury pre-made pie crust will be there. We can try tackling home made pie crust another day. Other than that, get everything else listed on the allrecipes.com ingredient list.

Next, take a trip to your local kitchen supply store or super target or something. If you are not living at home, I guarantee you don't have the supplies needed to make this pie.

You will need:
1) ingredients
2) stainless steel mixing bowl
3) a hand mixer
4) an oven
5) measuring cups
6) a grater
7) a sauce pan
8) serious patience

If you have all of these things, follow the recipe on the site. It is very self explanatory, once you are prepared - that is. Now I just want to offer you nuggets of info. that they don't tell you on allrecipes.com because these people know how to cook.

- You cannot, I repeat CANNOT make meringue in a plastic bowl with a whisk. Neither of those things will yield meringue. And you will develop carpal tunnel. A hand mixer at my local CVS was $14 and the stainless steel mixing bowl was $9.
- BAKE the pie crust. Once you thaw it, you don't just wait to pour the scolding hot filling in. You need to bake the crust simultaneously while you are making the lemon filling.
- Follow the recipe step by step (the video helps). Your filling will be runny if you do not temper your eggs (wait until the lemon mixture is hot, then take a spoonful of the hox mixture and mix it with the eggs, and then return it to the hot mixture).
- Don't forget the butter...I did
- Pour the hot mixture into the crust when it is piping hot.
- Quickly mix up your meringue (you should already have your egg whites separated with sugar on hand). It only takes a few minutes with your hand mixer and your mixing bowl. You will want to add the meringue to the pie when the filling is still very hot.
- Bake the whole pie - even once you put the meringue on top, you still need to bake it about 10 minutes in the oven.

I sincerely hope this helps some poor soul out there. Impress your mom or your girlfriend or boyfriend and make them fresh homemade pie. :)

Quarter Life Crisis (QLC)

A quarter-life crisis isn't really a new concept but the economic climate and job market that the current 20-something generation faces, in my humble opinion, is amplifying the effect and prevalence of QLC's. I began to experience my QLC last summer after I finished my first year at my second university when I found out that I would not be receiving enough financial aid to return to school in the fall...great. On top of that, my boyfriend of 3 years broke up with me...fucking FANTASTIC, right? I started to panic and began asking myself questions like, "will I ever get my degree?" "did I waste my time busting my ass all of these years to get good grades?" "I wonder if I could qualify as an independent?" and then it turned into "WILL I DIE AS A CAT LADY ALL ALONE?!" and "I DON'T WANT TO LIVE WITH MY GRANDPARENTS FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE!!"

I needed a break. So I went to visit some of my good friends in Brooklyn to get my mind off of things. I hadn't laughed that hard in so long. I discovered that 40's of PBR, rooftop party hopping, and shopping at second hand stores distracted me from the problems at hand. In fact, I loved it so much, I moved to Brooklyn the following week and fell even deeper into my QLC. I worked 3 jobs inconsistently, spent all of my money (and a lot of my family's) on clothes and bagels, and did anything that I could to keep my mind off of what I was going to realistically do with my life. 3 months later I was depressed, had no money, pissed off a lot of family that cared about me, hadn't enrolled in school for the following semester, and was still eating Kraft's single cheese because I didn't know how to - and didn't care - to figure out how to cook.

Unfortunately, all of this needed to happen for me before I could get back on my feet again. I am now attending school, live with my new boyfriend, have a job...but I'm still trying to figure all of this out. I'm happy that I fell flat on my face, but now that I've risen again I need to learn how to re-live life independently as a 21 year old. I cook (most of the time), I don't rely on my parent's for my rent or much else for that matter, but EVERYDAY I am faced with new challenges and I'm sure a lot of you are too.

Keep revisiting my blog - I will post when I discover an easy and delicious new recipe or how to dress for different types of interviews, or how to paint and update your childhood bedroom furniture - now that our parents decide to love us from afar, this is where I will put of the stuff that either you can't, or won't, or are too embarrassed to ask for.

Regards,
KTB

Class of 20__

I hope that this blog can serve to save someone some trouble as all of us 20-something's stumble through our quarter-life crisis (QLC). I made this blog because I'm tired of listening to parent's and grandparent's complain about their 401 K's, taxes, having to work until 55, the price of milk, and how our generation doesn't have our shit together. I'm 21, living on my own for the first time (well, kind of - more on that later...) and just like so many other people my age, starting my life with a whole lot of debt, 2 years left of college, an internship AND a job, and not a clue in the world as to what I'm doing. OF COURSE I don't have my shit together. I don't care if you grew up extremely privileged in the suburbs or if you had a rough raising - chances are that if you're in college and/or on your own for the first time, you're probably experiencing a bit of an identity crisis. I consider myself to be a very organized, ambitious, well-rounded, educated individual but sometimes, I just don't know what the FUCK I am doing. Whether it's trying to figure out the best way to study for a foreign language exam, how to cook a homemade lemon meringue pie, how to submit my tax return, how to pick my class schedule just right, how to get a peach juice stain out of my new white pants, the right way to quit a job over e-mail, etc...

Over the next year (and hopefully more), I would like to dedicate myself to sharing my experiences with my quarter-life crisis with you so that we can all navigate this together and make our QLC's just a little bit easier.

Regards,
KTB