Grandmother's Lemon Meringue Pie

1 1/2 cups sugar
4 heaping tbsp flour
3 egg yolks, well beaten
3 egg whites, stiffly beaten
grated lemon peel of 2 lemons
1 1/2 cups hot water
juice of 2-3 lemons
1/4 sugar

Stir together sugar and flour, be sure there are no lumps in flour.  Add grated lemon peel to mixture. Add hot water to sugar/flour mixture, set over low heat.  Add egg yolks to mixture stirring well and cook and stir until very thick.  Remove from fire, cool quickly in cold water bath.  Add the lemon juice slowly, stirring as you add. Pour lemon mixture into baked pie shell.  Beat egg whites to frothy and add 1/4 - 1/2 cup sugar then continue beating until very thick and shiny.  (I add more sugar and 1 tsp of vanilla to my meringue)  Spread egg whites on top of lemon mixture and bake in a 450 degree oven until meringue starts to brown.

First of all let me tell you that I LOVE Lemon Meringue Pie.  I especially love it when it's been made by my grandmother or mother.  Now my grandmother was the pie expert in the family and hers turned out perfect every time.  Well, except for this one time which I will get to later.  Anyway, whenever I make a pie like this, for some reason I can never get the filling thick enough. When you go to eat it the pie I made you have to use a spoon instead of a fork.  I just don't have that magic touch when it comes to pies.  So for this review I will tell you that taste wise this pie is awesome.  Sweet, tart and topped off with just the right amount of sweetness in a fluffy meringue.  Appearance wise, before cutting into it, it looks fantastic.  Once you cut into the one that I've made, however, I'm sorry to report that it runs all over the place.  My mother says that the key to a thicker pie is to really heap your heaping tablespoons of flour when you make this pie so listen to her when you make it!!!

Now, back to the story about my grandmother and her perfect pies.  There was this one time, according to my daddy,  when my grandmother's home made pie didn't turn out so perfect.  It probably looked and smelled as good as any other pie she had ever made but it had a little something extra.  My daddy took a bite out of a slice of lemon meringue and was surprised to fine a not too pleasant bonus inside.  Grandmother must have had a headache or something when she was cooking that day and may have reached for a bottle of Aspirin.  The cotton that they put in the top of pill bottles somehow fell into the pie unbeknownst  to my grandmother and turned up in the slice of pie that my dad had just bit into.  Needless to say, this gave him some useful leverage that no mother-in-law wants a son-in-law to have rights to.  Every time we have lemon pie this story always comes up and we get to remember grandmother and her Lemon Meringue "Cotton Ball" Pie.