TOMATO PIE

How was your weekend? We took a lovely trip to East Tennessee to visit family. It was filled with picture taking, swimming, pina coladas and family. Oh yeah, and tons of tomatoes. It's that time of the year when you just can't get rid of them fast enough before someone is giving you more. My mother in law had about 20 softball sized tomatoes and we found some great ways of getting through them. We made marinara sauce, gazpacho and tomato pie. The tomato pie was so good that we made it twice so I thought I would share it with you here.

Ingredients:

1 pie crust (we used Pillsbury)
1.5 cups mozzarella cheese, shredded
.5 cup parmesan cheese
1 cup fresh basil, loosely packed, diced.
4 cloves garlic, diced
1 large tomato
.5 cup mayonnaise
freshly ground pepper

Directions:

1. Bake pie crust according to instructions on box. Don't forget to poke the bottom and sides with a fork to keep the crust from bubbling up on you.

2. Sprinkle .5 cup of the mozzarella cheese in the bottom of the crust.

3. Slice your tomato and lay it on paper towels to dry them as much as possible. You can cut out the "gooey" parts if you like, we did.

4. Arrange the tomato slices in the crust.

5. Sprinkle the garlic and basil over the tomato.

6. Mix together the remaining cheese with the mayonnaise and pepper. Spread this mixture over the tomato.

7. Bake in a 375 degree oven for about 35 min or until the cheese has browned. You may want to put a little foil on the pie crust edges to make sure they don't over cook.

8. Remove from the oven and let cool to room temperature before serving.

Notes: We made another pie the next day with 2 layers of tomato and more cheese on top. We ate this one warm out of the oven for a more pizza like quality. I found the pie to be delicious either way.

**Image via Skip to my Lou**