November is a time for Citrus

Last week two of my coworkers brought in bags of citrus from their trees.  The satsumas that my boss brings in are tasty and sweet and people just eat them as a snack.  I have also used them to make a marmalade in the past.

This year the boss of my boss brought in what she described as northern (frost tolerant) key limes.  I was wondering about this and after doing some searching I think they might be limequats, a cross between the key lime and the cold hardy kumquats.  You can buy a limequat tree at Just Fruits and Exotics in Medart.

I was excited about them and when there were still a bunch left at the end of the week I brought them all home and planned to make a key lime pie with them.  I figured that I could also freeze the juice for future use.

A basket of limequats

 

The recipe I was using was an "easy" key lime pie recipe and it called for 1/2 cup of lime juice.  It took about ten limequats to make that much juice.  Luckily my aunt recently sent me a vintage juicer.

Juicing limequats

I also had to use 5 egg yolks.  My eggs come from my chickens in the backyard.  They are all different breeds and lay different sized eggs.  I am not sure if it mattered that much for egg yolks (even the tiny bantam eggs seem to have regular sized yolks) but the standard egg size in baking is large so if you are using other sized eggs you need to make sure you are using the right amount.  The My Pet Chicken blog has a great explanation here: 

My Pet Chicken Tips for Cooking with Backyard Eggs

 

So, I used my Jiffy Way egg scale (also from my aunt) to make sure the eggs I was using were about the right size, just to be safe.

I love my vintage jiffy-way egg scale.  It makes for great decor and it is useful too!

 

My daughter and I mixed up the ingredients and put it in the pie crust (going the easy way with some local ingredients here).  Then I noticed that the comments on the recipe had some modification recommendations to make sure it filled the pie pan.  Oh well.

Well, didn't quite fit all the way, but I am sure it will be tasty.

 And in the end it was pretty tasty.  My daughter didn't like it (it is very tart) but my husband and I did.

 

The final product with ready-whip.  So I used some local ingredients while still keeping it easy.