Recipe Wednesday - D.B. Grady

This recipe made me laugh out loud. Please read it all the way through.

Lemon Icebox Pie

Nobody ever accused me of being Gordon Ramsay. If a recipe calls for more than three ingredients, I'm in over my head and questioning lifeas we know it. So finding an item for Recipe Wednesday resulting in a

call to my mother, who knew a quick childhood treat my grandmotherused to prepare for us. If you can't make this, you should probablys tick to writing and takeout food.I

NGREDIENTS:

1 box, Vanilla Wafers

2 cans, Condensed Milk

4 Egg Yolks

1 container, Cool Whip.

1/2 cup, Lemon Juice.

It should be clear right away that we're not preparing mousseline au chocolat.

1. Take a large sheet of wax paper, and line it with vanilla wafers.Cover the wafers with another sheet of wax paper. Try not to eat too many vanilla wafers as you do this. (That's the real challenge here.)

2. Take a rolling pin, and crush the vanilla wafers into atoms.

3. Line the bottom of a disposable pie pan with a nice, thick, evenlayer of crushed vanilla wafers. Line the sides of the pan with wafers still in tact.

Congratulations! You now have a pie crust. You reallycan't mess this up. If you do, perhaps Burger King has something good on the menu tonight.

4. In a glass bowl, beat the egg yolks until they've learned theirlesson. Why a glass bowl? It has something to do with molecules or the space-time continuum.

5. Add the two cans of condensed milk. Continue beating like you're an extra in a Jackie Chan movie.

6. Add 1/2 cup of lemon juice. Continue your brutal assault.

7. At this point, you should have a decently thick lemony cream thing.Cooks know what this is called. I don't.

8. Pour your decently thick lemony cream thing into the pie crust.Even it out with a spoon. At this point you should have something thatcan reasonably be called a pie.

9. Cover your pie pan and put it in the fridge for a few hours. Idon't know exactly how many hours, but if I had to guess, I'd say 4hours and fifty-eight minutes. Or all night. Either one should do.

10. Remove the cold, solidified, tasty-looking pie from the fridge.Open that giant tub of Cool Whip** that you'd ordinarily eat with a spoon as you cry over how meaningless life is. Generously ladle theCool Whip over the pie.

11. You have created a lemon icebox pie. Everyone called mygrandmother Bootsie, so let's call this Bootsie's Lemon Icebox Pie.Put it back in the fridge until your friends come over. If you have no friends, you may eat the pie immediately.

**My grandmother made a meringue as the topping, but let's face it,that's beyond the scope of my abilities. Just use the Cool Whip.---

D.B. Grady is a freelance writer and author of RED PLANET NOIR. He isa graduate of Louisiana State University and lives in Baton Rouge, Louisiana with his wife and family. Grady is a former paratrooper with U.S. Army Special Operations Command and is a veteran of Afghanistan. He is a member of the Authors Guild and Bayou Writers Group, and can be found on the web at http://www.dbgrady.com/.

About RED PLANET NOIR:Michael Sheppard was the best private eye in New Orleans, and then his wife left him. After finding solace in the bottle, he finds his career in the toilet. Nights at the casino pay the bills, until they don’t,and leg breakers start knocking at the door, and knocking out his teeth.When a socialite on Mars offers him work, it’s a chance for a new start. Her name is Sofia Reed and her father is dead. The coroner says suicide, but Sofia suspects foul play. A leader of the Martian police state, her father had powerful enemies, and nobody on Mars will touch the case for fear of retribution. Michael Sheppard is her only hope. Chased by cops and gangsters, his investigation takes him from stately mansions to smoke-filled speakeasies, from deserted ice colonies to mining towns on the asteroid belt. All he wanted was a paycheck to clear some gambling debt. Now Michael is the key figure in a murder conspiracy that’s left a vacuum in the halls of power, with the labor union, mob and military vying forcontrol of Mars.

RED PLANET NOIR is a hardboiled 1930s detective novel with cross-genre science fiction appeal. It is a Raymond Chandler mystery in a Robert Heinlein world.