Lately...

I've been very busy. Sorry I have not blogged. Unfortunately, I don't see it changing anytime soon. April has turned out to be a very busy month. It already appears that May will be no different! Welcome Spring, Goodbye Winter!!!

This really isn't a very exciting blog, but I did want to share the recipe for the wonderful dinner we had last night. I made a tomato pie.

I started by putting a pot of water on the stove to boil. While it heated, I started chopping up a yellow bell pepper and an onion. I heated a Tbs of olive oil in a saute pan and then browned the pepper and onion, adding a freshly pressed clove of garlic and a dash of Italian seasoning (basil, oregano, etc.), salt, and pepper.

while that was browning, i put the crust in the oven (while it was preheating to 375 degrees). By the time the oven was hot, the crust was well thawed - it does not need to be baked first. When the water boiled, I put 4 tomatoes, whole, in the boiling water for about 5 minutes. Doing this makes it easy to peel the tomatoes.

So next I peeled the tomatoes, and cut them into slices. i sprinkled both sides with salt and placed them on paper towels (both above and below) to absorb the water (melissa, this is how you make a tomato pie that is NOT soggy). I didn't come up with that alone, I learned it from Paula Dean yesterday when I looked up this recipe.

OK, so on to cooking. I put one layer of tomatoes on the crust, followed by all the browned onions and peppers, then the remaining tomatoes on top of that. In a separate bowl, I mixed a bag of Italian cheese (already shredded) with about a half of a cup of mayonnaise. This ends up being kinda chunky like cookie dough. The cheese and mayo mixture is spread on top of the tomatoes and then I just pressed it down a bit.

Pop that in the oven and in about 30 minutes, the cheese will be brown and it'll be ready to eat! It is very tasty (just like the one they make at the Tea Room), has no meat (for those of you who are pregnant and/or don't like meat), and you could make it lactose free if you used fake cheese! I also imagine that fat free mayo would be ok, as would just using a "fake" sour cream rather than mayo (if you detest mayo). I also think that using canned tomatoes would be an option also. I'm sure it won't taste quite as fresh, but I think it'd be good if you wanted to shorten a step! You could also make it low carb or wheat free if you didn't use a crust beneath it! I think it would still be good without the crust because the crust really doesn't add to the flavor. It just helps hold it together when you spoon it out!

So, if you make one, let me know how it turns out!